Uses of Twitter and Reddit in the US Following the Abolition of Roe vs. Wade

The next speaker in this ICA 2024 conference session is Mengyu Li, whose interest is in link-sharing patterns on Twitter and Reddit, here in the context of the abortion debate in the US following the Supreme Court’s abolition of Roe vs. Wade. Which information domains are critical in this context – health and welfare, civic and activism, political and legal, economic and employment information? How do social media platforms address these information needs? What primary sources are being shared here? What are the themes and strategies of such sharing?

This study gathered one year of data between March 2022 and March 2023, capturing some 35m tweets and nearly 4m Reddit posts; it engaged in content analysis and topic modelling, identifying some 12 overall domain categories, and conducting a topic modelling of a 10% random sample of the posts. Link titles and texts were also analysed.

News media links dominate on both platforms, and especially on Twitter. Beyond these, healthcare, social media, and education, research, and information links are especially prominent on Reddit, while legal and political advocacy links are more visible on Twitter.

Further topic modelling of the post contexts in which such links are shared shows additional differences – Twitter in particular seems to be addressing a wider range of more distinct issues, often related to quickly changing news events. And while Twitter addresses more general and nationwide issues through hashtag activism, Reddit provides more diverse detail on specific local activism and support across the United States.