This study aims to examine the effect of gender on interactions in online romantic advice forums on Reddit. Specifically, the effects of a submitter’s gender on the interactions and type of interactions their posts create. The research is based on r/AmITheAsshole and r/RelationshipAdvice posts about relationship dilemmas.
This paper will address a gap in existing knowledge by combining multiple research foci into one study. There is significant research about the role of gender in relationship advice given by print media, particularly the gendering of advice columns, and some quantitative research about the broad effect of gender on online interactions. However, this research would effectively bridge the gap between these two topics by acknowledging and exploring their relationship to interpret the social system within online forums.
This research is important because it will show both if and how gender affects these interactions, while also demonstrating how new forms of media are affected by their ancestors, even if the user base doesn’t overlap. The information provided by this research demonstrates important information about sociological influences on interactions concerning advice with other people via online media.
This research consisted of conducting content and textual analysis of posts and responses about relationship dilemmas to reveal quantitative data and apply metrics to linguistic evaluations. This data was used, with the consideration of social and historical contexts, to examine the way different genders may receive, give, and perceive relationship advice within the forum. Data was collected using Communalytic, cleaning the data to only include relevant posts and to group comments and replies with their corresponding submission, then analyzing the data to look at average sentiment and judgements to make conclusions about the type of interactions occurring.
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