2.4 Q2: Exploring user/account patterns
[đŸ”—Github Link]
2.4.1 What are the patterns of user activity on the subreddits of interest?
There are 87,743 unique authors in r/Dogecoin and the specific selection of r/Cryptocurrency that we considered. ‘Users’ include any user who has authored a post or a comment on these subreddits. Of these users 2,782 users were active in both the subreddits.
| r/subreddit | Number of Users | Posts Per User | Comments Per User | Average Score Per Post by User | Average Score Per Comment by User |
| r/CryptoCurrency only | 23,007 | 0.06 | 2.94 | 2.69 | 2.99 |
| r/dogecoin only | 61,954 | 0.55 | 4.00 | 10.02 | 2.93 |
| Both (r/CryptoCurrency + r/dogecoin) | 2,782 | 4.26 | 92.33 | 16.40 | 2.99 |
Breaking down users by their affiliation to the different subreddits, there are distinct engagement patterns. The users who are part of both the subreddits lead across almost all metrics indicating that they are very enthusiastic about the prospects of Dogecoin and drive conversation about it across channels. Posts generated by these users are distinctively more appreciated as compared to those generated by users who are dedicated to a single subreddit.
2.4.2 Are there any characteristics of when users engage on the platform
We proceed to evaluate the nature of posting behavior over time. This sort of analysis is helpful to understand if there are any particular windows of a day where activity levels are higher or lower. Our analysis shows that there are similarities in the trends of when posts and comments are made in the subreddits. Across the 24 hour window in a day, posts and comments have shown a distinct peak and a distinct slump. Peak activities were witnessed across 14:00 to 20:00 UTC while the slump can be seen from 06:00 to 12:00 UTC. Though we do not have additional information of the users local timezones the usage patterns may help make guesses about the local timezones of clusters of users.
Activity can be estimated based on the tagged signals of engagement by a user. These can be derived from the data about either publishing a ‘post’ or ‘comment’ by the user. Based on this analysis, we see higher levels in the number of active users from January to April in 2022 and then slump to low levels before attempting to pick up towards the end of 2022. These levels directly follow patterns seen in the volume of posts and comments. Segmenting users into the number of days of being active show us how they remain engaged with the conversations on the platform. We can see indicators of short-term engagement for the majority of users. These users have typically stayed engaged for less than 5 days across the observation period.