Beyond Upvotes: A New Approach to Measuring Influence on Reddit

The identification of leading nodes in social networks is crucial to understand how information flows and influence is managed within communities. This work tries to make amends for one of the limitations of modern social networks: restricted access to data, studying user interactions beyond conventional metrics of upvotes. Using Reddit as the core focus, this work tries to explain, through users' replies and comments engagements, including even the creation of memes or video sharing, how influential users usually do not always get the most upvotes. In this framework, the current paper proposes a novel approach to the identification of leading nodes based on their creation capabilities and influence with regard to reaction and creation of content in the general network, using data from certain communities on Reddit and graphical databases such as Neo4j. These results should provide new tools for the analysis of information flow in social networks, especially in cases when limited data is available.