GCU Reddit Deviant Group Analysis Question – Description
The objective of this assignment is to apply a critical perspective based on knowledge and material from this course to a deviant group from Reddit. In this paper, you will collect your own data from Reddit to examine a deviant group of your choice (this must be approved by the instructor). Given the vastness of deviant groups on Reddit, there is a lot of flexibility in what you end up writing, however a brief outline is as follows:
1. Introduction
What deviant group are you choosing to study? This part should offer a brief explanation of your group, a brief background of who they are, and what makes them deviant (e.g., is the deviance discredited or discreditable?).
2. Methods
How are you studying this group? Data from this study comes from the specific subreddit(s), which is how Reddit is organized. In this section, describe characteristics of your deviant group (e.g., “To study individuals with STDs, I examined posts from the subreddit R/STD. R/STD has been a community since (date), and currently has (xx) number of members.” Some communities even have descriptions of what their subreddit is about, this is the spot for that.
How did you collect your data? In research methods classes, whether you have taken them previously or will take them in the future, you learn about the necessity of systematically collecting data. Rather than cherry-picking posts or narratives at random, you will need to employ some sort of systematic strategy to get the data. For example, you could organize the posts by either ‘new’, ‘hot’, or ‘top’ and specify a time period (e.g., I sorted the posts by ‘new’ and examined the most recent 20 text-based posts).
3. Results
What did you find? The following are a list of questions that you might attempt to answer:
What are some of the apparent norms of this group? What does this group seem to value? What themes are you seeing across posts or comments? Are there any clues as to how one ‘learns’ to be in this group? Are there any clues as to how members join this group? What drives this group (e.g., what is their ideology)? Do members of this group employ techniques of neutralization or accounts (e.g., excuses, justifications) to mitigate stigma?
In this section, please include direct quotes that best illustrate your findings.
4. Conclusion
A summary and conclusion paragraph ties your paper together. Who is this group? What did you find?
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