Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit

by Adrienne L. Massanari

What does online community look like in the age of social networking? How do participatory culture platforms reflect both their designers' intentions and the desires of their users? In this incisive and timely work, Adrienne L. Massanari discusses how culture is created and challenged on Reddit.com, the self-proclaimed "front page of the internet."

Reddit enables the sharing of original and reposted content from around the web, and provides a platform for like-minded individuals to commune around topics of interest--everything from the joys of drinking beer in a shower (/r/showerbeer) to celebrating the pleasures of tidy penmanship (/r/penmanshipporn). Massanari's ethnographic work provides a detailed examination of the contradictions that shape Reddit's culture and how they reflect its role as an epicenter of geek culture.

The book explores the ways in which community on Reddit is formed and solidified through play and humor, and the complex ways in which Redditors come together, which demonstrate a deep capacity for altruism and charitable giving, but can easily lapse into mob action. It also explores the community's troubling gender and racial politics and how some Redditors are carving out their own space on the site to fight back.

Genres: Nonfiction

215 pages, Paperback

First published February 27, 2015

Reviews

[Ari Stillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the first books that takes an in depth look at the dynamics, culture(s), and significance of Reddit as a platform and community. The author does a remarkable job teasing out the humor, norms and their subversion, meta-conversation, and other aspects of Reddit that could only be understood by someone who spent substantial time on the platform and reflected on what they found. However, despite cautioning her reader against generalizations and making the case for idiosyncratic subcultures across Reddit, her analysis not only paints with a broad brush but does so disparagingly. By the end, it is clear that she would like Reddit to be a progressive online utopia divorced of all the problematic prejudices found across humanity. After characterizing Reddit and its members as "deeply" libertarian and pigeonholing a typical Redditor rather than attempting a typology of types of Redditors, she hones in on the male gaze and threats to female empowerment while patently neglecting to judiciously interrogate any of the many counter-examples that demonstrate the opaqueness of her lens. For instance, she cherrypicks a number of memes that she claims objectify women such as Scumbag Stacy, claiming the male alternative, Scumbag Steve, is less a categorical assessment of gender and more of a situational irritation. She considers the discourse on /r/mensrights to be antifeminist and dismisses the concerns of its members as misguided. While her judgmental language and ideological agenda throughout the book detract from her academic objectivity, the book nonetheless is a helpful for understanding some of the less obvious mechanics of Reddit and makes the case for the importance of studying individual Subreddits.

Note also that the book was published in 2015 and since Reddit's new content policy in 2020, so many of the hateful spaces on Reddit have been banned or otherwise squelched.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super-comprehensive ethnography of Reddit from the perspective of an academic who is a researcher and a woman.
Surprisingly not at all dry, which it so easily could have been. Instead it was both informative and, at times, thoroughly entertaining.

[Columbae Taurus · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is good as it give an excellent review of Reddit, but there is too much cherrypicking, and biases on making judgements about Reddit.