research question

9_ What are the arguments of the most relevant post about SCS on Reddit?

Approaches Single comment analyzed related to a specific argument Neutral Uncertain Ironic Concerned Against Argument Number of comments analyzed 00 CLUSTER Thematic categories Specific argument identified Tot comments analyzed: 147 RELEVANT COMMENT Text of an example comment for each category POST ANALYZED China has started ranking citizens with a creepy 'social credit' system — here's what you can do wrong, and the embarrassing, demeaning ways they can punish you: The program is due to be fully operational by 2020, but is being piloted for millions of people already. The scheme is mandatory. VIEW POST POP CULTURE 42 Black Mirror Brave New World Community Demolition Man Feudalism Half-life 3 Kino's journey Martin Niemöller Meow Meow Beans Orville Orwell Phil Dick and Kafka ETHICS 39 Anger Control Fear Freedom Human behaviour Manipulation Oppression Stress POLITICS 37 Communism Facial recognition Law Punishments Score Society System FREE TIME 14 Social media Video games HABITS Confucianism Religion West-East culture 9 ECONOMICS Consultation services Money Sesame credit 6 RELEVANT COMMENT Just like in Black Mirror's "Nosedive"... This entire situation is literally a direct parallel. Scary. VIEW COMMENT RELEVANT COMMENT The former is freedom of expression, and it's how societies have always worked. What's happening in China is a suppression of that same freedom. VIEW COMMENT RELEVANT COMMENT In China, they already have cameras with facial recognition at every light signal in most cities. VIEW COMMENT RELEVANT COMMENT Your username contains the word "hamster". Hamsters are enemies of the state. 30 points have been deducted from your score. You have 12 hours to delete your account before your wife is banned from eating or buying ice-cream at any establishment. VIEW COMMENT RELEVANT COMMENT Just remember that the Chinese are not just Westerners living in a different place. VIEW COMMENT RELEVANT COMMENT You are fined 5 Zhima credits for conflicting fake internet laughs. VIEW COMMENT
Description Protocol Data

Description

We decided to discover the main arguments of the debate about Social Credit System on Reddit, a popular platform for discussion. The visualization shows how one of the most relevant threads about Social Credit System is structured and what are the main arguments related to the theme. We discovered a strong connection between the arguments mentioned on Reddit and the ones found out in the previous protocols. Since we discovered that in China there is no proper debate around Social Credit System, we chose to focus only on the western world: in addition, there is no Chinese counterpart for Reddit, as there aren’t any social sites designated for discussions on controversial topics, also because of the strong online censorship imposed by the government. At first we analyzed different posts from the first results searching for Social Credit System and we discovered that each post had the same main arguments. Therefore, we chose the most relevant one among the others and also the most replied one. We selected the second result when searching for that query because the first one was off topic. After reading and analyzing each comment, we categorized them based both on what was the comments’ argument and the approach of the users.

Thanks to the analysis of this protocol and the previous ones we are able to get to some conclusions: at first, in the western world SCS topic is strongly debated and there are also some recurring themes around it which are repeated among almost all platforms of discussion. In a specific way, the debate is often related to some cultural references about imagery of dystopian society (for example Black Mirror and Orwellian novel) or about ethic issues like privacy and freedom. The comparative analysis used in the majority of protocols led us to notice that there is a strong difference between western and Chinese perspective. In fact, in China there is almost no debate about Social Credit System because, for Chinese people, this system resembles a good way to reward honesty and loyalty and to punish outlaws and criminals. For them, they’re confident to be scored by the government.

Protocol

example of protocol

We chose to analyze Reddit, so we searched for Social Credit System on the platform. By ranking the posts by Top, we chose the second one as it was the most relevant and replied one. We extracted the comments that could be seen without opening all the hidden replies and we categorized them based on: the macro argument they were talking about (economics, ethics, habits, politics, pop culture and free time), the specific argument they were addressing (for example Black Mirror or freedom) and the approach used to reply (against, ironic, uncertain, concerned, neutral).

Data

Data Source: Reddit
Timestamp: 01/12/2018
View Data (500Kb)

The dataset collects all the 147 Reddit comments and presents six main items: level, text, points, macro-argument (5), specific-argument (35) and approach (against, ironic, concerned, uncertain, neutral, in favor).