The subject of conflict nature of the Reddit community driven discussion platform has been considered. The Reddit section entitled “Unpopular Opinion” has been selected, as it is a base for the most conflicting users' comments. The comments to the conflict situations have been discovered by means of linguistic markers and manipulative contexts. Phrases and sentences marked with manipulative, implicit or explicit nature of utterance have been found and grouped. The algorithm of sequence of step analysis concerning the Reddit social network comment system has been considered. The linguistic markers of the most contradictory posts have been analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC).
The conflict situation is an integral part of human nature. To manage it effectively it
takes time to be a skilled interlocutor. To find a solution to the raised issue requires
the following steps: to realize the conflict situation exists for real (being open about
the issue); to allow the communicators to freely exchange their opinions concerning
the issue (expressing emotions); to consider the problem (defining its negative
impact); to discover needs (before finding solutions); to agree on some points
(discussing what is in common); to keep in mind that something can go wrong (determining
other ways to deal with the issue).
bridging the gap between communicators in dispute trying to handle the conflict with
compromise. Moreover, such factors of human complexity nature as gender and
culture are involved. Culture provides individuals with particular roles to play in society
and duties they tend to be responsible for. Gender helps structure people’s activities
and relationship according to their preferences [
Reddit is one of the social entertaining and news networks which is suitable for social
analysis. It is a source of various insightful patterns of how to interact with each other
through a vast majority of comments [
Such characteristics as forgetting your desires, selflessness, ability to yield, obeying orders are considered. 3. Competing mode is represented by high assertiveness and low cooperation encompassing the following: arguing or debating, using rank or influence, asserting your opinions and feelings, standing your ground, stating your position clearly. 4. Avoiding mode has low assertiveness and low cooperation in terms of ability to withdraw, ability to sidestep issues, ability to leave things unresolved, sense of timing. 5. Collaborating mode is high assertiveness and high cooperation. Its skills are as follows: active listening, nonthreatening confrontation, identifying concerns, analyzing input.
There are lively discussion statements and comments from different users in social
network Reddit. Taking into account lively statements and comments of a variety of
community members we select those for analysis to which linguistic markers of
manipulation, implicit and explicit influences, contradiction, arguments, approval,
disapproval, etc. can be applied [
This comment section is characterized by explicit negative contradictory tone of the comments and explicit rhetorical questions.
Next Comments relate to the rubric-statement concerning the controversy in terms of Coronovirus itself (Fig. 6). NC: Let me preface by saying that I'm not glad that people are dying and suffering in any way because of COVID-19, but..(competing – stating your position clearly), FC: Coronavirus is a good thing because all the healthy people are coming out alright or better, and all the old people and people in poor health who can't contribute to the economy or the better advancement of humanity are dying off (avoiding – ability to leave things unresolved), Why should I care if some 80-year-old who has lived their life, but continues to live because modern medicine refuses to let them die, dies off? (collaborating – identifying concerns), Is it sad? Not really. A lot of people die every day (accommodating – selflessness, ability to yield), The truth is this thing is serious. Trump supporters. Listen I honestly have defended Trump many times and have tired to be fair unlike most Americans. Do I like him? No. But I’ve defended him at times and understand why people like him. But stop giving him excuses (collaborating – identifying concerns, analyzing input), You can deny news but I think there are truths to what people are saying about this virus and disease (collaborating – identifying concerns, analyzing input), But to be optimistic our country need to not give up and not think things will be hard (collaborating – identifying concerns, analyzing input), Again this isn’t war but this situation isn’t a joke (collaborating – identifying concerns, analyzing input).
This comment section is too controversial as members easily raise the issue of death in a sarcastic way and simultaneously try not to implicitly sound too much rude. Even such ridiculous comment sections occur as the following (Fig.7). But it only proves that a range of human social patterns can be unexpectedly various, and they are often intensified when the panic factor takes place. NC: Those who survive, survive and those who die, die. Everyone who lives develops immunity and the virus is completely wiped out (competing – asserting your opinions and feelings, standing your ground, stating your position clearly), FC: This is stupid on so many levels (competing – arguing or debating), You could say it’s unpopular being stupid endangers others, being unpopular only affects yourself. I just made that up. Does it sound right? (collaborating – nonthreatening confrontation), Sounds good to me (collaborating – nonthreatening confrontation), Explain yourself? Everyone should get infected by the coronavirus? Are you willing to submit yourself to that? Are you willing to submit all your friends and family to that? Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is and watch as a percentage of the people you know die? (accommodating – ability to yield), Yeah sign me up! Where’s the closest person you know with Coronavirus? I’ll square up (accommodating – ability to yield), Wow Darwinism hope ur part of the equation that gets wiped out since its just an opinion for u. Or maybe I should live as watch the ones u love die one by one. Yeah second choice (competing – arguing or debating).
This comment section is rather sharp than previous ones as each comment is
expressed explicitly in a rude way in rhetoric questions and assertive statements.
In Fig. 8 there is an algorithm covering the general structure of the Reddit social
network comment system, which was described in detail in previous publication.
In order to define linguistic markers and some psychological patterns we apply
Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC, https://liwc.wpengine.com/results/). It is a
text analysis program that counts word for semantic groups as well as structural
characteristics. This program groups psychologically and linguistically marked categories.
It checks target words in the dictionary and calculates frequencies. Such trustworthy
results have been used in a lot of studies to allocate data concerning personality [
Fig.8 General structure of the Reddit social network Fig. 9 Percentage overview of the LIWC automatic analysis of the semantics of the
Reddit comment section In comparison to the average for social media our textual comments represent and prove their contradictory nature, particularly, when it comes to negative emotions, social words and cognitive processes. All other indicators do not influence a general layout of the material analyzed.
The following Reddit statements will be beneficially analyzed and compared between each other to fully detect the capacity of resolving conflict situations in a social network environment.
The section itself (‘Coronavirus Megathread’) sounded contradictory as it was chosen in terms of contradictory statements. Particular statements of comment section were selected and analyzed according to implicit and explicit linguistic nature of utterances. In this paper a general structure of the Reddit social network and exemplifications of each step of its virtual elaboration as well as conflict response modes and its possible strategic solving principles were considered. The analysis of linguistic markers of discussion was outlined. To define the ways of dealing with a conflict statement, the conflict response modes were applied to the comments. As a result, five different conflict response modes were allocated. The frequency of response conflict modes of these conversations was calculated (see Table 1).
Comment section In general, competing and collaborating conflict response modes dominated in these comments. They show that the discussion was active and community members emotionally reacted and responded in order to gain a necessary result of conversation. Compromising was not achieved as none of the comments was discussed for a while. Accommodating was characterized with sharp explicit rhetorical questions and ability to yield. The most frequent conflict response mode was collaborating, as people eagerly identified concerns, analyzed inputs and confronted non-threateningly. The contradictory statements were solved in a rhetoric way implicitly or explicitly but bombarded with various opinions, facts, evidences and user’s own experience. The LIWC automatic analysis of the semantics of the Reddit comment section was conducted. 5