Ripple Effect: Opinion Leaders' Impact on Subsequent Discourse on Reddit

Social media platforms are essential social outlets for many people around the world. They combine virtual communities and groups that discuss various topics with many active users. Reddit is one of the most popular and interactive social media platforms and microblogging websites, and it is known for user-generated content discussing trending interests (Arazzi, Nicolazzo, Nocera, & Zippo, 2023). It is divided into subreddits that vary in topics discussed, number of participants, popularity, interactivity, etc. Opinion leaders play a vital role in thread participation and subreddit engagement (Alazazi, 2023). Studies have shown that threads initiated by opinion leaders got more comments than those initiated by other users in specific subreddits (Rohde, Liu, & Rees, 2023). The content created by opinion leaders attracts other users to engage with and comment due to their ability to convince others, and their skills in constructing interesting content promote further engagement. The role of opinion leaders in elevating the discussion and influencing others is significant. However, the linguistic characteristics of comments by opinion leaders and the consecutive comments by others have not been well studied and understood. In this study, we aim to shed light on the distinctive linguistic features of the language used by opinion leaders, including humor, sarcasm, emojis, and technical terms, through a stylistic analysis of their content. Furthermore, we aim to study the impact of the opinion leaders’ posts on the subsequent comments' content in terms of agreement or disagreement with the opinion leaders’ comment and the matching of sentiment expressed and other content-related measures. We aim to analyze Reddit's actual content using natural language processing, social network analysis, and machine learning algorithms. The study can reveal important insights to better understand Reddit users’ behavior and content creation. It will help in understanding information flow and influence. By identifying opinion leaders, researchers and analysts can map how ideas spread and how users can amplify or suppress them. These results can help Reddit moderators identify opinion leaders and employ them to disseminate awareness, combat misinformation, and spread positive vibes in the online community.