Currently the r/australia subreddit is filled with posts about internet censorship, the ongoing Carbon Tax debate and ensuing Senate shenanigans. So accordingly it makes sense that new analysis of sentiment on Reddit, has deemed r/australia as the second most negative community on the site.
GetRedditAlerts has this week undertaken a sentiment analysis study by reviewing and analysing 20,000 comments on Reddit and categorising them to form the top 10 most positive and top 10 most negative subreddit communities.
The r/australia subreddit comes in at number two on the most negative list, bested only by the MMA community, where users are probably venting pent up aggression. Other communities to make the naughty list include r/TalesFrom Retail, r/MensRights, r/Science and, as a nod to Commonwealth unity, r/canada.
Conversely, the study shows Pokemon enthusiasts are the most happy-go-lucky people on Reddit with the r/poketradereferences subreddit topping the most positive list. That community is joined by the happy people at r/gonewild, r/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon, r/Minecraft and scarily, r/guns.
Gizmodo points out the methodology used for the study isn’t exactly airtight, seeing as it only analysed 20,000 Reddit comments – a very small sample size, and those comments dated back to November last year. The study’s author Aakil Fernandes also acknowledges the pitfalls of sentiment analysis, warning users to “be skeptical of the results.”
“The field is in its infancy and computers simply are not capable of understanding unstructured human language with competence,” Fernandes writes. Check out all the results here.
