Authors: (1) UTKUCAN BALCI, Binghamton University, United States; (2) MICHAEL SIRIVIANOS, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus; (3) JEREMY BLACKBURN, Binghamton University, United States. Authors: Authors: (1) UTKUCAN BALCI, Binghamton University, United States; (2) MICHAEL SIRIVIANOS, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus; (3) JEREMY BLACKBURN, Binghamton University, United States. Table of Links Abstract and 1 Introduction Abstract and 1 Introduction 2 Background & Related Work 2 Background & Related Work 3 Data 3 Data 3.1 Identifying Tankie Subreddits 3.1 Identifying Tankie Subreddits 3.2 Identifying Ideology Subreddits and 3.3 Post Collection 3.2 Identifying Ideology Subreddits and 3.3 Post Collection 4 User-Base Analysis and 4.1 Graph Construction & Community Detection 4 User-Base Analysis and 4.1 Graph Construction & Community Detection 4.2 Community Growth 4.2 Community Growth 4.3 User Migrations Over Time 4.3 User Migrations Over Time 5 Content Analysis and 5.1 What do tankies talk about? 5 Content Analysis and 5.1 What do tankies talk about? 5.2 Who are tankies talking about? 5.2 Who are tankies talking about? 5.3 Misalignment Analysis 5.3 Misalignment Analysis 5.4 Toxicity Analysis 5.4 Toxicity Analysis 5.5 Domain Analysis 5.5 Domain Analysis 5.6 Lemmygrad Analysis 5.6 Lemmygrad Analysis 6 Discussion & Conclusion and 6.1 Limitations 6 Discussion & Conclusion and 6.1 Limitations 6.2 Implications & future work, and References 6.2 Implications & future work, and References A DATA A DATA B NAMED ENTITIES B NAMED ENTITIES C MISALIGNMENT ANALYSIS C MISALIGNMENT ANALYSIS D DOMAIN ANALYSIS D DOMAIN ANALYSIS 4.3 User Migrations Over Time Using the approach outlined by Ribeiro et al. [103], which tracks the movement of users across different Manosphere subreddits, we measure the extent of migration from a given source community to a destination community via two metrics: Migration Relative to Destination (MRD), which measures the degree to which migrations into a destination community can be attributed to a given source community: Migration Relative to Destination (MRD), Migration Relative to Source (MRS), which measures the degree to which migrations from a source community can be attributed to a given destination community: Migration Relative to Source (MRS), In this analysis, we examine two distinct time periods: July 2019 (when r/GenZedong was founded) to June 2020 and July 2020 (when the tankies community overtook r/communism in terms of MAU) to March 2022. MRDs and MRSs from other far-left communities to tankies are presented in Figure 4. During the first month after r/GenZedong was founded, 58.4% of the tankies user-base came from other far-left communities. On average, 34.3% of tankies MAU came from other far-left communities during the first period. However, during the second period, there was a clear decrease in migrations from other far-left communities to tankies, with a mean MRD of 17.3%. The highest migrations to tankies come from r/communism and r/socialism for most of the months in our dataset. During the first period, the mean MRDs from these communities to tankies are 15.8%. The second period also saw a decrease in MRDs from these communities, with mean MRDs of 5.7% and 8.4% respectively. We find strong negative correlations between the monthly user counts of tankies and MRDs to tankies from r/DemocraticSocialism (𝜌 = −0.71) and r/Anarchism (𝜌 = −0.71). We also find moderate negative correlations for r/Marxism (𝜌 = −0.69), r/communism (𝜌 = −0.68), r/socialism (𝜌 = −0.64), and r/IWW (𝜌 = −0.60). In contrast, we find a moderate positive correlation for r/alltheleft (𝜌 = 0.49). We do not observe any trend for this community’s MRDs to tankies, and we find decreasing trends for MRDs from other far-left communities to tankies when applying the Mann-Kendall test. For the MRSs of other far-left communities to tankies, a different pattern emerges. In the second time period, we find that the MRSs to tankies from these communities are higher. Instead of r/socialism, we find r/Marxism and r/communism have the highest MRSs to tankies for most of the months in our dataset’s timeline. The mean MRSs for r/communism and r/Marxism are 6.4% and 7.5% in the first period, but they increase to 16% and 13.3% in the second period. This means that over 1 in 10 users from r/communism and r/Marxism continuously migrated to tankies during this period. This trend is also seen for r/alltheleft, except for three months. Our findings show that r/DemocraticSocialism and r/Anarchism have the lowest migrations to tankies, with mean migrations of 1% and 1.5% in the first period, and 2.4% and 2.6% in the second period, respectively. In contrast to MRDs, we find positive strong correlations between the monthly user counts of tankies and MRSs from other far-left communities. r/socialism (𝜌 = 0.93), r/alltheleft (𝜌 = 0.91), r/DemocraticSocialism (𝜌 = 0.89), and r/IWW (𝜌 = 0.72) have strong correlations, while r/communism (𝜌 = 0.68), r/Anarchism (𝜌 = 0.62), and r/Marxism (𝜌 = 0.50) have moderate positive correlations. We also find increasing trends for MRSs from each far-left community to tankies, except for r/Anarchism. We find all correlations are significant, with 𝑝 < 0.01 after adjustment for multiple testing using the Benjamini-Hochberg method [17]. Takeaways. Overall, we find that the user-base of tankies is definitively positioned on the periphery of far-left ideologies. When we examine the migratory patterns between tankies and other far-left communities, we find that the popularity of tankies increased among other far-left communities (except r/Anarchism), even though their proportional contribution to the user base of tankies decreased over time. This suggests that the initial tankies community started with a relatively small number of members from established far-left communities, and then rapidly siphoned off members from these other far-left communities once it exceeded the user base of r/communism. Takeaways This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv
