How Reddit has led to various cases of groupthink and group polarization: A deeper look into the downsides of a such large group discussions.

     I choose to do my project on how Reddit has led to various cases of groupthink and group polarization: a deeper look into the downsides of such large group discussions. I choose to do my project on this topic because of two main reasons. One being, a specific story involving the Boston Marathon bombings. It is a well documented story that one of the bombers was actually misidentified on Reddit and led to various issues and serious problems for the misidentified bomber. The second reason being my fascination on group dynamics. I took a class on Social Psychology at Baruch and in one of the chapters, my class discussed the positives and negatives of working in a group setting, with a variety of different factors effecting overall experience and execution such as group size and the role of the group. The positives of a group setting are definitely apparent but some people tend to overlook the downsides of it. I believe this second category to be much more interesting because of the lack of general knowledge on it. I thought Reddit would be an amazing place to do my own field research on this topic because of the first story, and because it is such a constantly moving organism with varying levels of dissenting voices and opinions. I plan on diving deeper into these themes in my project.

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