Disentangling Participation in Online Political Discussions with a Collective Field Experiment

Abstract

Online political discussions are often dominated by a small group of active users, while most remain silent. This visibility gap can distort perceptions of public opinion and fuel polarization. Using a collective field experiment on Reddit, we examined factors predicting self-selection into silent “lurker” and active “power-user” roles and tested whether participation can be affected with norm- or incentive-based interventions. We recruited 520 U.S. participants, randomly assigned them to conditions in six private communities, and asked them to discuss 20 political issues over four weeks while completing weekly surveys. Lurking was most common among users who perceived discussions as toxic or unconstructive; these same perceptions also predicted power-usership. Experimentally, financial incentives for commenting reduced participation differentials whereas we did not find effects from a civility norm treatment. These findings support preference- and incentive-based accounts of participation but suggest that light-touch interventions are unlikely to bridge participation gaps, let alone polarization.