Validate social-axis self-declarations on Reddit’s Political Compass

Determine whether the self-declared libertarian–authoritarian social-axis flairs used by Reddit users in /r/PoliticalCompass and /r/PoliticalCompassMemes accurately reflect users’ social ideology by devising and applying an external validation procedure analogous to the validation performed for the economic left–right axis using Waller and Anderson (2021) subreddit-based z-scores.

Background

The paper leverages users’ self-declared flairs in /r/PoliticalCompass and /r/PoliticalCompassMemes to position them on two ideological axes: economic (left–right) and social (libertarian–authoritarian). The authors validate the economic axis by comparing declared left/right flairs with partisanship inferred from users’ subreddit activity following Waller and Anderson (2021), finding alignment that supports the economic-axis labels.

However, the authors explicitly note that they lack a comparable validation for the social (libertarian–authoritarian) axis. Establishing an external, quantitative validation for the social-axis self-declarations would strengthen the robustness of conclusions about homophily/heterophily and toxicity patterns along this axis.