RedditThoughtBot

Tackling the question of what Reddit thinks.

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Inspiration

I'm an avid Redditor. One of the comments thrown around on the site is that "Reddit changes its mind [so readily]." This app puts that claim to the test, tracking Reddit's actual opinion over time.

What it does

It takes Reddit submission and comment data from a particular subreddit and analyzes the sentiment of some topic. It returns a graph which maps the sentiment over time.

How I built it

IBM Watson Alchemy was the workhorse of this application. The entire application is composed of for scripts: pull.py (gets Reddit data), sentiment.js (the get individual comment sentiments), parse.js (calculates long-running sentiment), and graph.py (makes the graph obviously).

Challenges I ran into

The hardest part of making this app was making a decent algorithm that made sense. I ultimately decided on a algorithm that keeps track of the sentiment of comment chains, where comments that break the mold have a much larger sway.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

This is my first big data project!

What's next for RedditThoughtBot

More needs to be done to answer the original question. It is not sufficient enough to see the overall sentiment of people. It is also important to know who those people are. Do particular groups of people dominate discussion? Do powerful groups switch off? I hope to analyze contributors' long-term sentiments that they bring into the discussion.

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