FREEDOM FROM THE PRESS? How anonymous gatekeepers on Reddit covered the Boston Marathon bombing

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Journalism Studies

ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjos20

Freedom from the press?

Melissa Suran & Danielle K. Kilgo

To cite this article: Melissa Suran & Danielle K. Kilgo (2015): Freedom from the press?,Journalism Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2015.1111160

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FREEDOM FROM THE PRESS?How anonymous gatekeepers on Redditcovered the Boston Marathon bombing

Melissa Suran and Danielle K. Kilgo

As citizen journalism continues to increase in popularity, social news sites (i.e., websites where users

produce the content) are also gaining prominence on the Internet. Nevertheless, there is little

research about how social news sites function. One such website, known as Reddit, has a

growing user base of more than 100 million individuals and has played an important role in dis-

tributing information about critical and current events. Through examining a major incident

where Reddit was acknowledged as an important informational entity, this study analyzed

varying characteristics of content posted on Reddit in order to determine whether the website,

as it claims, has “freedom from the press,” or if it follows gatekeeping practices that are similar

to those implemented by traditional media outlets.

KEYWORDS crisis news; framing; gatekeeping; Reddit; social news sites; user-generated

content

Introduction

On April 15, 2013—Patriots’ Day—a bomb detonated near the finish line of theBoston Marathon. Approximately 10 seconds later, a second bomb exploded about 100yards away from the first blast (Bodden 2014). More than 260 people were injured; threelost their lives (Iaboni and Asher 2013). In the midst of the confusion, the public wantedanswers, and fast. While journalists were reporting on the incident, other individualswere also providing information via social media. One website in particular was noted inmedia conversations—Reddit1 (Bodden 2014; Kaufman 2013).

Reddit is a website built on user-generated content (UGC) that claims to be the “frontpage of the Internet” (Reddit 2015c). Featuring a plethora of online topics, Reddit breedsconversations between individuals without spatial limitations and serves as a platformfor globally networking information. Many major news outlets from around the world (e.g., Carr 2012; Chen 2012; Isaac 2010; Morse 2015) have acknowledged Reddit’s growinginfluence and ubiquity. The website gained further momentum after being highlightedin media coverage during the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

In response to the crisis, Reddit users almost immediately began posting relevantinformation to the website. This material included: a comprehensive, streaming timelineof occurrences; information that the mainstream media did not immediately cover, suchas eyewitness and personal accounts; pertinent news links; attempts to identify thebombers; and additional material that users considered important information (Garber2012; Ingram 2013). Hence, Reddit garnered media attention for its content related tothe bombing incident (Martinez 2013). Because of high levels of user activity within the

Journalism Studies, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1111160© 2015 Taylor & Francis

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Reddit community, this study analyzed news and user-generated information about theBoston Marathon bombing to explore how Reddit users organized and utilized informationrelated to the crisis and to determine the origins of this material.

Reddit content is not restricted to a word count or character limit. Users have thepower to post news, ideas, and other content, as well as vote and comment on the material.Reddit’s primary focus on news has led many to regard the website as a social news site(Chen 2012; Leavitt and Clark 2014). During a crisis, such as the Boston Marathonbombing, Reddit serves as one of many pivotal media contenders that define a momentin time. Since Reddit played a crucial role in the dissemination of information related tothe Boston Marathon bombing, this study examined Reddit content related to the crisisand aimed to determine if Reddit’s post-moderation content features characteristics thatare similar to those of mainstream media content, which is subject to traditional gatekeep-ing regulations. This is accomplished by analyzing framing structures and sources of thecontent posted, which also helps to assess the differences and similarities betweenvarious subdomains, known on the website as subreddits. While this study specificallyexamines content about the Boston Marathon bombing, it also provides insight into howReddit’s subreddits are used as online spaces to create, compile, and share content.

Literature Review

Reddit: A Social News Site

Although Reddit has gained the attention of popular news media, scholars have yetto give the website much careful consideration. While there is research that analyzes howsocial media create public spheres, there is a gap when it comes to studying the types ofcontent shared on social news sites (Leavitt and Clark 2014). Reddit, a social news site thatclaims to have “freedom from the press,” functions as a democratized platform for the dis-semination of information (alexis [kn0thing] 2009, 1; Chen 2012; Leavitt and Clark 2014).These forums allow users to engage in interaction that is unrestricted by geographic,spatial, or temporal boundaries. The opportunities offered in social news sites allow for indi-viduals to gather, post, and distribute information in cyberspaces. The democratic nature ofsocial news sites allows for civic participation on a global scale, which in turn leads to amore informed and active international society (Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl 2005; Kahnand Kellner 2004). While some scholars applaud the Internet for being a democraticsphere that not only allows but also encourages citizen involvement and free speech(Ackerly 2003; Curran 2003; Harlow 2012), the researchers of this study found only onearticle (i.e., Leavitt and Clark 2014) that examines how the content of social news sitesmay shape a platform and its uses.

Reddit, though released in 2005 (Reddit 2015a), remains largely unstudied in scho-larly work. On this website, users create a presence by posting and commenting on thecontent—making them information gatekeepers. A 2013 Pew Research Center study—which conceptualized Reddit as a social networking site (SNS)—found that of all theassessed SNSs (including Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Myspace), the website featur-ing the greatest proportion of users who visit it to find news is Reddit (Holcomb, Gottfried,and Mitchell 2013). As of 2013, 6 percent of online adults were self-proclaimed Reddit users(Duggan and Smith 2013), as Reddit has become the 10th most visited website in theUnited States while ranking 32 globally (Alexa 2015). According to statistics provided by

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Reddit in 2014, 45 percent of the website’s users hail from outside the United States, andthe top five cities with the most visits to Reddit are New York, London, Los Angeles, Sydney,and Toronto, respectively (erik [hueypriest] 2014; Unknown 2014). While many of theseusers choose to remain anonymous (with their usernames being their sole source of identi-fication), a range of international celebrities have identified themselves on Reddit whileusing the website, including Stephen Colbert, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, RachelMaddow, Barack Obama, Patrick Stewart, and even The New York Times’ Paul Krugman,members of Monty Python, and the South Korean musician Psy (Block 2010; Carr 2012;Gupta 2013; King 2015; Krugman 2012; Moran 2013; Mullins 2013; Walker 2015; The Huffing-ton Post 2012). Since its debut, Reddit has become a successful public forum—as of June2015, it boasts more than 7.5 billion page views per month and has approximately 3.5million logged-in users, known on the website as “redditors” (Reddit 2015a).

Redditors follow subdomains dedicated to specific topics known as subreddits, whichare stylized with “/r/” before the topic name. These redditors can create content in morethan 9300 active subreddits and may either “submit a new link” to an outside source or“submit a new text post” to manually compose information (Reddit 2015a; 2015b). Theycan also embed hyperlinks to outside sources within personally-constructed posts. Whiletechnically, redditors create all subreddit posts, the posts that only linked to sourcesoutside of the original subreddit were conceptualized in this study as outsourcedcontent, whereas text posts were considered UGC.

Comments replying to initial posts can be left in response to all content, which in turncreates a dialogue among users called a thread. While redditors are granted considerablecontrol of the website by posting and commenting on content, subreddits do have mod-erators whose usernames are listed on subreddit homepages. Though some subreddits arenot stringently censored, others have fallen victim to allegations of active moderation(Dewey 2014). This became an issue during the Boston Marathon bombing when redditorsmisidentified the bombers (Kleinman 2013). Thus, this study analyzed posts that survivedcensorship to determine if the remaining content on Reddit is similar to content foundin the mainstream news media, where traditional gatekeeping procedures are usuallymaintained.

Gatekeeping

While scholars have studied gatekeepers on social media (Ali and Fahmy 2013; Xuand Feng 2014; Zelenkauskaite 2012), there is a lack of research that analyzes anonymousgatekeepers online—such as the ones that inhabit Reddit—and how these gatekeeperstend to react during a crisis. Gatekeeping theory describes the way media control the con-struction and dissemination of information (Shoemaker 1991; Shoemaker et al. 2001). In themedia, gatekeepers have the ability to decide what articles and images are and are not pub-lished (White 1950) and can function “at formal, structural, or community levels” (Keeganand Gergle 2010, 131). Thus, entities or individuals who act as gatekeepers have thepower to select and present content that they deem worthy and distribute this informationto selective audiences.

Researchers have developed a variety of ways to analyze gatekeeping, such as imple-menting a range of algorithms, conducting analyses of network gatekeeping, and examin-ing technological gatekeepers (Barzilai-Nahon 2009; Shoemaker, Vos, and Reese 2009;Sturges 2001). Moreover, Coddington and Holton (2014) argue that gatekeeping must be

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updated to incorporate new technologies and channels of communication, which chal-lenges one-way models. With the increase of these technologies, such as websitesrooted in UGC, the traditional notions of information regulation alter. In many instances,users maintain the ability to create and distribute information without the consent of con-ventional gatekeepers (Keegan and Gergle 2010).

However, gatekeeping is not necessarily transformed in this new era, but instead, itspowers are extended. Despite the growing ubiquity of UGC-based forums and websites, thepublic still tends to invest more trust in information provided from online newspapers (Utz,Schultz, and Glocka 2013). Moreover, previous research has noted that blog and Twitterusers primarily utilize their spaces to discuss information that they consume from tra-ditional media sources, such as newspapers (Schultz, Utz, and Göritz 2011). This notioncoincides with Chew and Eysenbach’s (2010) finding that social media users were likelyto post news when discussing a recent crisis. Although such users usually have the oppor-tunity to post alternative content, such as personal experiences and blog-style pieces fromsources that are not considered mainstream, they choose to disseminate traditional newsinstead (Chew and Eysenbach 2010).

But while websites such as Reddit serve as platforms for publishing UGC, mainstreammedia arguably hold power by influencing and filtering content (Ali and Fahmy 2013).According to Ali and Fahmy (2013, 57), “through gatekeeping practices, mainstreammedia continue to maintain hegemony over information disseminated by citizen journal-ists.” The authors also argue that all content is subject to such mainstream media pro-cedures even when the content finds its way into the headlines of more traditional newsoutlets. Thus, the gatekeeping of UGC is oftentimes quite similar to the gatekeepingmethods of mainstream media. For example, Domingo and Heinonen (2008) found thatblog publishers are implementing gatekeeping practices normally utilized by the traditionalmedia, such as not allowing comments at all, or at the very least, requiring comments toattain moderator approval prior to publication.

Because Reddit was subjected to moderation in the case of the Boston Marathonbombing, examining the remaining information will help to determine the origins of thesurviving content. This will also shed light on whether other media sources are thedefault gatekeepers of particular subreddits (opposed to “citizen journalists”) if users aremore likely to reference outside content instead of creating their own. Therefore, thisstudy aims to verify whether Reddit, as it claims, is in fact free from the press, at least inthe case of the Boston Marathon bombing—a crisis that garnered Reddit prominenceand even influence in traditional media outlets—or if Reddit is just an extension of themainstream media.

Crisis Coverage in the Media

Although there are websites similar to Reddit such as Digg and StumbleUpon, Reddithas propelled significant changes in the citizen journalism realm. While Reddit has acted asa crowdsourced newsroom during many critical times, the website garnered more promi-nent mainstream media attention in 2011 when a Virginia Tech student continuouslyposted updates and managed a live question-and-answer session on Reddit while the uni-versity was on lockdown after a police officer was fatally shot on campus (Sonderman 2012;Zafar 2011). Then in July of 2012, another redditor used the website to provide live updateswhen a gunman opened fire in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater and killed 12 people.

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According to The New York Times, other redditors began posting to the thread, adding rel-evant information that the mainstream media failed to report on, in effect “breaking newsto the media” (Chen 2012, 1). Thus, “one of the most effective sources of information aboutthe massacre has been Reddit” (Garber 2012, 1). As a result of the enduring citizen journal-ism found on the website, major media sources have used Reddit content in their reports,while other news outlets, including MSNBC and The Washington Post, have attempted tocontact redditors for information (Adweek 2012).

In 2013, Reddit once again made headline news in light of the Boston Marathonbombing. However, after gaining praise for user attempts to identify the primary suspects,Reddit was soon under scrutiny—by both its moderators and the mainstream media—forproviding erroneous information (Kleinman 2013). Reddit was accused of allowing contentcontaining personal information that was not fact checked to accumulate on the website,which led to the misidentification of the bombers (Kleinman 2013). The mainstream mediawas also at fault, however, for publishing Reddit’s misinformation. But Reddit is not alonewhen it comes to inaccurate content, as crisis scholars have found several disadvantages ofcrowdsourcing on social media during critical times, including the frequency of incompleteas well as fraudulent reports (Gao, Barbier, and Goolsby 2011).

Although an important area of study, research about crisis content on social mediahas only recently become noteworthy in communication studies (Utz, Schultz, andGlocka 2013, 41). However, the act of sharing crisis news on online platforms can inducemajor consequences by affecting the outcome of real-world events (Acar and Muraki2011; Palen et al. 2009). For example, because of information posted to Reddit regardingthe Colorado movie-theater shooting, police were provided with critical informationabout the shooter and had access to significant facts related to the incident, which inturn helped them with the case (Chen 2012). The majority of such distributed informationon social media, especially in relation to events that are catastrophic or disastrous, is pro-vided in the form of opinions and personal accounts as well as news articles (Bruns et al.2012; Chew and Eysenbach 2010; Hughes and Palen 2009).

Previous research analyzing crisis coverage in the news as well as on social media hasused framing theory to help determine how different outlets shape their information. Scho-lars have acknowledged the importance of examining how the media frame crises sinceframes have the power to affect public opinions of events (An and Gower 2009). Broadlyspeaking, message framing is “to select some aspects of a perceived reality and makethem more salient in a communicating text” (Entman 1993, 52). Iyengar (1991) contendedthat one general characteristic of frame construction and organization is the use of episodicand thematic frames. Episodic frames focus on individual behaviors and singular events.Thematic frames, on the other hand, are used to focus on an issue in general as itevolves. Identifying and expressing concerns about and solutions to problems, themes,and trends that develop over time help detect thematic frames (Entman 1993; Iyengar1991). Analyzing these generic frames in Reddit content will help determine whether red-ditors extend gatekeeping by distributing information in a similar fashion to the main-stream press, such as using more episodic than thematic frames. Furthermore, it offersinsight into how crisis content on social media is portrayed. While previous analyses ofFacebook and Twitter found that episodically-framed material about crises dominatedthe content on both websites (Muralidharan et al. 2011), there appears to be no researchconcerning episodic and thematic framing in relation to social news sites.

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Although there is very little literature on episodic and thematic framing of content onsocial media, there are studies concerning how journalists frame crisis news. For example,television news is usually framed episodically, especially in relation to terrorism reports(Iyengar 1991). Moreover, episodic coverage dominated news about several crises, includ-ing the Arab Spring (Chung and Cho 2013), Persian Gulf War (Iyengar and Simon 1993), and9/11 attacks (Nacos and Torres-Reyna 2003). Past research has also shown that crisis news ingeneral tends to be more episodic when covered by major newspapers (An and Gower2009). Thus, in accordance with Leavitt and Clark (2014), this study contributes to researchthat examines the framing patterns of crisis content on social news sites. The results willalso provide insight into how redditors and subreddit moderators create the final productsseen on the website, and determine if this content is similar to that found in traditionalmedia. Because Reddit was considered a prominent outlet in providing informationrelated to the Boston Marathon bombing, the purpose of this study is to examine: wherethe main sources of information came from, how the information was framed, andwhether the characteristics of the content that survived moderation were similar to thecontent of mainstream news.

Hypotheses

Scholarship suggests that during times of crisis, news is framed episodically moreoften than thematically (An and Gower 2009; Iyengar 1991; Iyengar and Simon 1993;Nacos and Torres-Reyna 2003). This pattern also tends to occur in crisis content on socialmedia (Muralidharan et al. 2011). Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H1: Reddit content about the Boston Marathon bombing will be framed episodically moreoften than thematically.

Furthermore, it is apparent that gatekeeping at this level is an extension of main-stream media gatekeeping powers, since gatekeepers filter news provided through UGC,“making it often consistent with narratives in traditional media” (Ali and Fahmy 2013,55). Thus, we can hypothesize:

H2: Reddit content about the Boston Marathon bombing will feature more traditionalmedia sources than alternative media sources.

As expressed by previous literature, social media users tend to repost more infor-mation from traditional news sources rather than provide their own personal accounts(Schultz, Utz, and Göritz 2011). This is also apparent in times of crisis (Chew and Eysenbach2010). Thus, more outsourced content (e.g., information from mainstream media outlets)than UGC tends to appear on such websites. Therefore, this study hypothesizes that:

H3: Reddit content about the Boston Marathon bombing will more likely be outsourcedthan original UGC.

Methods

Sample

The sample was collected on April 15, 2014 and consisted of posts from April 15, 2013through April 14, 2014. Because posts were collected a year after the bombing, the data do

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not include any deleted information and render post scores (i.e., the overall scores createdby a Reddit algorithm that factors time into the scoring equation) irrelevant. The keywords“Boston Marathon bombings” (which was how many major media outlets referred to theevent at the time it occurred) and “Boston Marathon bombing” (which later became con-ventionalized) garnered the same results. There were no differences in the results list whenthe searches were conducted with and without quotation marks and when the searchterms were and were not capitalized. While the Reddit search engine provides a list ofup to 20 subreddits with the most results, this study examined results from the three sub-reddits that featured the highest number of posts.2 Thus, the three subreddits analyzed inthis study were: /r/POLITIC (957 posts); /r/news (290 posts); and /r/conspiracy (281 posts).The search resulted in 1528 posts in total among the three subreddits. In order to assurea 95 percent confidence level and a maximum ±5 percent margin of error, it was deter-mined that a sample size of at least 307 posts was needed, and therefore, four wasdeemed the appropriate skip interval (Neuendorf 2002). A number between one andfour was then chosen at random as the starting point for collecting posts. In all, 240posts were analyzed from /r/POLITIC; 73 posts were analyzed from /r/news; and 71 postswere analyzed from /r/conspiracy, totaling 384 posts in the final sample with a ±4.33percent margin of error at a 95 percent confidence level.

The Subreddits

Each subreddit homepage features descriptive information about the subreddit onthe right-hand side of the page. Such information includes the number of subreddit sub-scribers, recently viewed links, rules pertaining to the subreddit (e.g., what redditors canand cannot post), and a description of the subreddit. The quoted information in this sub-section of the paper is from the homepages of the three subreddits used in this study:

. /r/POLITIC features the motto, “Politics without suppression.” This subreddit not onlyfocuses on inherent political issues, but also publishes information about news-related topics—such as the Boston Marathon bombing. In this context, posts regardpolitics in general, such as lawsuits, police investigations, and the military.

. /r/news describes itself as “ALL news, both US and international.”

. /r/conspiracy describes itself as a forum that, “challenge[s] issues which [sic] have cap-tured the public’s imagination. From JFK, UFOs, Gulf of Tonkin and of course 9/11.” Thissubreddit examines issues from a conspiracy theorist’s viewpoint. For example, severalposts from this subreddit explore the idea of government involvement in the BostonMarathon bombing.

Hyperlinks and UGC

Although all posts on Reddit are technically user-generated, for the purpose of thisstudy, “user-generated content” specifically pertains to text-based posts that include infor-mation beyond just a hyperlink. As mentioned previously, redditors have the option tosubmit a single hyperlink or create a post with authored content. When a user choosesto post only a hyperlink, Reddit automatically provides the name of the link’s source. Inthe case of a post that features a single link, clicking on the post title takes the user directlyto the linked website. In this study, the content labeled “user-generated” differs from theseoutsourced hyperlinks in the sense that: (1) when a user clicks on a the title of a user-

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generated post, the user is not redirected outside of Reddit; (2) if the post also featureshyperlinks, they are usually in context with issues addressed by the post; and (3) thepost features dialogue—not just a hyperlink.

While solely hyperlinked posts are considered separate from posts featuring morecontent created by users, hyperlinks serve an importance of their own, as they aid theprocess of interconnectivity and allow online users to “nominate what ideas and actorsshould be heard and with what priority” (Turow 2008, 4).

Codebook

The following variables were coded for each post: which of the three subreddits thepost was published in; the posting date; how the post was framed; whether the post was alink to an outside source or if it was UGC; whether UGC also contained links to outsidesources; and the link source.

Framing. This study examined the variation of episodic and thematic framing ofcontent that was linked outside of posts. When a post, whether link-based or UGC, includeda hyperlink, the first linked article was read to determine the predominant frame. Episodicposts regard individual accounts, events, or isolated incidents, such as breaking newsstories. An example of an episodic post from this study’s sample is one titled, “SteveAbraira, Boston Fire Chief, Quits Amid Marathon Bombing Criticism.” Thematic postsinclude information that tie accounts to larger issues or problems, linking isolated incidentstogether within a theme. Posts that are thematic in nature often place episodic events in amultifaceted account. One example of a thematic post is titled, “The Tipping Point: WhenConspiracy Theories Become Dangerous” and discusses how the application of conspiracytheorists may lead to national security threats.

Sources. To assess source differences within Reddit, measures were adapted fromMeraz’s (2009) study, which categorized hyperlinks in blog networks. Similar to thisstudy’s aggregation of hyperlinks, each URL was assigned to one category: conservativeblog; conservative partisan organization; educational/government website; independent/niche media; liberal blog; liberal partisan organization; neutral blog; nonpartisan organiz-ation; social news aggregator (e.g., Reddit); traditional media (e.g., newspaper and televi-sion news); undefined blog; Web-only news media (e.g., The Huffington Post and Vice);and an “other” category. The first link of every post was coded. Seven posts had brokenlinks that were not coded or included in related analyses.

Coding Reliability

An initial coding scheme was created and two independent coders were trained withposts not used in the final sample. Some minor adjustments were made to the codingscheme to increase reliability. Satisfactory Cohen’s Kappa scores of 0.84 or higher wereattained for all post variables during the final training session. Each coder was then pro-vided with half of the sample, which was divided randomly. Twenty percent of thecoded sample was measured for reliability, as noted by Riffe, Lacy, and Fico (2005).

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Results

H1 proposed that content would more likely be framed episodically rather than the-matically, and the results supported this hypothesis. Of the 364 posts coded,3 a total of 61.5percent of the posts were episodic (N = 224) while 38.5 percent of the posts were thematic(N = 140). During this period of crisis, Reddit functioned similarly to the traditional media,sharing and distributing episodic information more often than thematic information.Further analysis showed substantial variations among subreddits, as illustrated inTable 1. Chi-square results determined that the subreddits were significantly different[χ2 (2) = 6.33; p < 0.05]. While the majority of posts across all three subreddits were episodic,the /r/conspiracy subreddit had significantly more thematically-framed posts than the /r/news or /r/POLITIC subreddits.

H2 presumed that there would be more traditional media sources than alternativemedia sources linked within posts. Overall, traditional media hyperlinks (N = 192) were infact present more often than hyperlinks connecting to other media (N = 185), thus provid-ing support for H2. However, it is important to note that comparatively, a significant portionof sources derived from alternative media. Table 2 shows the cumulative frequencies of

TABLE 2Frequency of media hyperlinks from outsourced content and UGC

Media type Outsourced UGC

Conservative blog 7 (2.1) 1 (2.2)Conservative partisan organization 6 (1.8) 0 (0.0)Educational/government website 2 (0.6) 4 (8.7)Independent/niche media 76 (23.0) 12 (26.1)Liberal blog 4 (1.2) 0 (0.0)Liberal partisan organization 2 (0.6) 0 (0.0)Neutral blog 2 (0.6) 1 (2.2)Nonpartisan organization 1 (0.3) 0 (0.0)Social news aggregator 16 (4.8) 3 (6.5)Traditional media 174 (52.6) 18 (39.1)Undefined blog 7 (2.1) 1 (2.2)Web-only news media 31 (9.4) 2 (4.3)Other 3 (0.9) 4 (8.7)Totala 331 46

Percentages are given in parentheses.aOf all the posts that had functional hyperlinks, 87.8 percent were outsourced while 12.2 percentwere UGC.

TABLE 1Frequency of episodic and thematic frames

Subreddit Episodic Thematic

/r/conspiracy 27 (12) 30 (21.4)/r/news 49 (21.9) 23 (16.4)/r/POLITIC 148 (66.1) 87 (62.1)Totala 224 140

Percentages are given in parentheses.aOf all the posts that featured discernible frames, 61.5 percent wereepisodic while 38.5 percent were thematic.

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sources from each category. Results reveal that independent/niche media were the secondmost-referenced sources. Additionally, frequencies show that partisan blogs and organiz-ation-based sources appeared less frequently than other types of media. Interestingly,UGC did not have higher frequencies of traditional media and, instead, relied on alternativemedia sources to support claims.

Additional crosstabs were run to examine differences between alternative media andtraditional media within specific subreddits. The results demonstrate that the variationswithin subreddits are significantly different [χ2 (2) = 5.21 p < 0.01]. While /r/POLITIC and/r/news were more likely to link to traditional media, /r/conspiracy was overwhelmingmore likely to feature sources from alternative media websites. Table 3 illustrates thenuances of these frequencies by subreddit.

H3 proposed that content would more likely be outsourced than original UGC.Content characteristics of posts garnered interesting results. The vast majority of postswere composed of only direct hyperlinks to outside sources (87.8 percent, N = 337). Thus,the hypothesis was supported. Overall, only a small portion of posts consisted of UGC(12.2 percent, N = 47). /r/POLITIC and /r/news predominantly featured direct hyperlinksto other media sources. In the /r/conspiracy subreddit, however, there was more relianceon content generation than in other subreddits, as it had more balanced occurrences ofUGC (N = 33) and outsourced content (N = 38). Table 4 illustrates the varying characteristicsby subreddit.

TABLE 4Frequency of outsourced content and UGC

Subreddit Outsourced UGC

/r/conspiracy 38 (11.3) 33 (70.2)/r/news 68 (20.2) 5 (10.7)/r/POLITIC 231 (68.5) 9 (19.1)Totala 337 47

Percentages are given in parentheses.aOf all posts in the sample, 87.8 percent were outsourced while 12.2percent were UGC.

TABLE 3Frequency of alternative and traditional media sources

Subreddit Alternative Traditional

/r/conspiracy 51 (27.6) 19 (9.9)/r/news 23 (12.4) 49 (25.5)/r/POLITIC 111 (60) 124 (64.6)Totala 185 192

Percentages are given in parentheses.aOf all the functional hyperlinks, 49.1 percent connected to alternativemedia while 50.9 percent connected to traditional media.

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Discussion and Conclusion

This study explores an online space that has received limited scholarly attention yetprovided an important venue for online communication during the 2013 Boston Marathonbombing. During this crisis and others, information posted on Reddit influenced officialinvestigations and served as a key player for online information distribution (Chen 2012;Garber 2012; Ingram 2013). Therefore, it is crucial to understand from a systematic perspec-tive how the website’s content is characterized during a crisis and how redditors utilizevarious subreddits during these times. The results of this study, however, are reflective ofmore than just the bombing—they also provide insight about: (1) how a social newssite, specifically Reddit, is used as a space to create, compile, and disseminate information;(2) the types of media sources to which redditors tend to link; and (3) what kind of infor-mation is posted on a social news site during a critical event.

Using elements of gatekeeping, this study found that Reddit users often acted simi-larly to the mainstream press. These findings coincide with the results of earlier studies thatanalyzed offline journalistic organizations (Iyengar 1991; Iyengar and Simon 1993; Nacosand Torres-Reyna 2003) and found that news sources tend to frame their content episodi-cally and increasingly do so with crisis coverage. The results of this study found that postswere approximately 60 percent episodic and 40 percent thematic, and other news-framingstudies reported similar percentages: Nacos and Torres-Reyna (2003) found that 60 percentof news about American Arabs and Muslims prior to the 9/11 attacks was episodic; Iyengar(1991) stated that 66 percent of news related to poverty was episodic; Dimitrova et al.(2005) found that only 34 percent of the content on international news websites (e.g.,Ahram, Egypt; BBC News, United Kingdom; El Pais, Spain; Mainichi Daily News, Japan) fea-tured responsibility/thematic framing in coverage of the Second Persian Gulf War; and Mur-alidharan et al. (2011) reported that nonprofit and media outlet tweets in response to the2010 Haitian earthquake were 35.6 percent responsibility themed.

Perhaps redditors tended to post episodic information since details are important in atime of crisis. Thus, Reddit behaved in similar fashion to traditional news outlets because thenews redditors offered was so imperative at the time. Moreover, some of themain questionssurrounding the event focused on specifics and individuals, such as the bombers’ identities,why they detonated bombs at the marathon, and who was injured and killed by the blasts.

Overall, this study concludes that, at least in the instance of the Boston Marathonbombing, Reddit acts in a similar fashion to typical press and news distribution websites, gen-erally focusingmoreonepisodic occurrences rather thancreatingnewcontent or posting linksthat are concernedwith how the events play into larger issues, such as national security or ter-rorism. Reddit’s claim of “freedom from the press” is thus rendered inaccurate, as the websiteusers andmoderators produce final products that mimic many characteristics inherent to themainstream press. Nevertheless, not all redditors and subreddits follow this trend.

When examining individual subreddits, it is apparent that /r/conspiracy acts differ-ently than the others, as it features higher levels of thematic framing and more hyperlinksto alternative media sources. Thus, under the umbrella of a social news site, future studiesmay benefit by exploring subreddit variations for differences in these dimensions. Wespeculate that certain subreddits within Reddit may work differently, especially in differentscenarios. Although /r/news had significantly fewer posts than /r/POLITIC, the subredditswere similar—they both featured mostly episodic posts, more often sourced traditionalmedia than alternative media, and lacked UGC.

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The three subreddits together, however, provide evidence that the information dis-tributed in a time of crisis is similar to information distributed in other social networks(Bruns et al. 2012; Chew and Eysenbach 2010; Hughes and Palen 2009) as well as traditionalnews sources (Dimitrova et al. 2005; Iyengar 1991; Iyengar and Simon 1993; Nacos andTorres-Reyna 2003). As reported, individual subreddits act differently. Thus, the complexitywithin each subreddit begs for future research to understand the true influence of Reddit inthe public sphere. While these individual differences are interesting, this study provides evi-dence that during the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, Reddit served as avenue that acts similarly to other media networks, which was somewhat expected giventhe findings of previous analyses that examined social media and traditional news(Schultz, Utz, and Göritz 2011). Also similar to other news websites, moderators regulateReddit’s gates, and the final product is comparable to content found in mainstreamnews. Hence, Reddit moderators and posters work together as gatekeepers to create anoverall environment that functions much like another press entity.

Limitations and Future Studies

Limitations of this study include the omission of visual content as well as the concen-tration within certain subreddits regarding a specific event. Additionally, this study did notprovide insight about the topic or focus on the content as it particularly related to theBoston bombing, but instead, provided information about the characteristics of Redditcontent surrounding the incident. Future studies should examine the day-to-day activityon individual subreddits as well as Reddit as a whole to better understand how informationon Reddit is similar to and different from other social news sites.

Reddit, as whole, is curated on a global level, with almost half of its users being fromcountries other than the United States (Unknown 2014). Therefore, it is possible that theBoston Marathon bombing sparked an international conversation about a domestic USissue, as the gatekeepers in this case could have been a collection of international users.Hence, this study might have examined a localized phenomenon on a worldwide scale,but it is impossible to know since the users are, for the most, anonymous.

Reddit offers researchers vast opportunities to explore how content on a variety oftopics is created and distributed within and outside the network infrastructure. Futurestudies may examine Reddit and another social news site, such as Digg, to better under-stand how users on these websites frame the same event. Scholars may also assess howReddit content differs from traditional media content in other countries. To continuesuch research on a global scale, it may be useful to compare media and Reddit coverageof various events that occurred around the world.

With the continuing growth of such a prominent website, the exploration of Redditprovides insight into how social news site users generate and share content. Thus, furtherexamination of this online space is necessary. Because researchers have yet to pay muchattention to this area of online media, this study provides a microscopic examination ofa vast network that has yet to garner ample scholarly exploration.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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NOTES

1. Reddit is often stylized as “reddit” (in all lowercase letters) as well.2. No subreddits specific to the Boston Marathon bombing (e.g., /r/findbostonbombers) were

analyzed in this study because they did not appear among the top search results. This wasmost likely due to the strict moderation of such subreddits, which were either deletedentirely, became private domains requiring moderator approval to join, or no longerfeature all their original content.

3. Posts (N = 20) in which coders could not identify episodic or thematic frames wereremoved from the analysis for H1.

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Melissa Suran (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), School of Jour-nalism, The University of Texas at Austin, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Danielle K. Kilgo, School of Journalism, The University of Texas at Austin, USA. E-mail:[email protected]

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