Drifts and Shifts: Characterizing the Evolution of Users Interests on Reddit

Abstract: Selective exposure is the main driver for the economy of attention when consuming online content. We select information adhering to our system of beliefs and ignore dissenting information. However, even personal interest is likely to play a role in determining our attention patterns. To understand in more detail the dynamics of interest-driven choices, we address the evolution of users' interest on Reddit by means of an analysis on more than 7 million of users. We observe that the lifetime distribution of users on subreddits (online thematic communities) is 'short' with respect to the observation period. Furthermore, users tend to be active on a very limited number of subreddits with respect to the wide offer of the platform. These aspects indicate the presence of a migrating behavior of users among subreddits. To characterize this phenomenon we propose a metric based on a geometrical encoding of the 'interest space' of the user. The movement of users across subreddits is characterized by a bursty trend, made of sudden variations. The most frequent of them take place between recreational subreddits and those more related to news and politics. We describe this kind of activity with two behaviors called interest drift and interest shift. Our results suggest that selective exposure and personal interest coexist in driving content consumption.