In all 35 months and across all 3 communities, only 5 categories were most popular in any given month: Health, Biology, Psychology, Environment and Medicine. Here is where we start to see a strange pattern emerge, the most popular topics for the posters are only Health and Biology. The professionals were far more dynamic in this sense, with all 5 categories being the most popular at some point, while the comments community is largely restricted to Psychology and Health as its most popular topics.

The question of why there is such a disparity between the communities poses itself and I believe it has a simple answer. Accessibility. If we look at the professionals, the people with expertise, experience and access to the scientific community. Their trend can be attributed to the fact that they have greater access to the information of new interesting studies and research that is being produced across all fields. In my experience within the scientific community I can claim that scientists love all things science no matter what branch it comes from and have an urge to share this interest and communication of knowledge. But if we look at the posts and comments communities, we can see that Health and Psychology dominate the topic of conversation. This is simply because these are very relatable topics that everyone deals with in their day to day lives.

Everyone has experience with health concerns and mental health issues (the bulk of psychological topics discussed). This means that the pool of people that can interact with these topics is far larger than any of the others, more people can respond to questions and give input to others using their own experience. Whether this comes in the form of having lived with or helped someone with specific illnesses or themselves have been through certain ordeals. When talking about Astronomy on the other hand, black holes, neutron stars and exoplanets are not as easily accessible to the common person as how to brush your teeth.

If we look at the amount of comments certain topics receive (since the other communities also fit into this one) we can see this in action. The top 3 posts across the whole study period in Health with the most comments discuss: suicide, obesity and alcohol. These are things that unfortunately some or most people have experience with and thus have their own opinions about. Obesity is something always seen in the news and ignites the debate between the general public and health experts. With the USA making up 60% of Reddit traffic and having a 30% average national obese rate (https://stateofobesity.org/adult-obesity/), a large portion of the Reddit users probably have had some interaction with obesity in their lives. The top 3 posts in Psychology with the most amount of comments discuss: suicide, politics and spanking children. Again, these are not uncommon things. Regarding politics, everyone has some experience of it in their lives… or well at least I hope they have. This is a topic that people form very strong opinions and lines about, increasing the urge for people to comment and express their views.

Let’s compare those findings to what the top 3 posts with the most comments discuss in Astronomy: the possibility of hundreds of dead civilizations in the universe, Earth sized planets found orbiting a dwarf star and, how the comet that killed the dinosaurs triggered an ice age. Now if you are not an expert in these topics, which could you more quickly and easily have a conversation about? Politics or how thousands of advanced civilizations out in the cosmos have come and gone way before our time? I’m going to bet most of you will pick the former and are left scratching your heads at the latter, while a very interesting theory it is not one most people are accustomed to discussing.

So, by using Reddit to evaluate the trends in the online scientific community we have established that, like in the real-world, people interact with science with a varying degree of intensity and knowledge. Reddit followed the trends of real-world events, as we saw a united community in mourning in March 2018 when Steven Hawking passed away and a united community in awe and celebration just the month previous when the Falcon Heavy Rocket launched. This establishes that it is a good proxy for monitoring trends of the scientific community. We saw that the professionals who have a more direct access to the scientific world and information have a much broader interest than the general public. This makes sense, they have chosen this as their career path and in such a career they are in the pursuit of knowledge. The other communities then are much more focused on health and psychological topics which again makes sense, we all have lots of experience relating to these topics allowing us all to have detailed conversations about them.

Reddit is only growing, both as a platform for the everyday person and for those that we elevate up to celebrity status. Science, unfortunately is stuck behind the wall of politics, which is why for example the UK has an Antarctic program but not an Arctic one, despite it being 7,700 miles (12,390 kilometers) further away. As such Reddit could serve as a starting place for the borderless spread of knowledge as we move into the future. A place to learn and spread ideas, a platform where the common people and the scientific community can interact in a positive way. The discussion and spread of current and up-to-date studies is important as it can trigger people to re-establish their own paradigms and even inspire people to study it further, advancing knowledge for everyone.