Abstract

With the rapid proliferation of social media sites, researchers have increasingly turned to data generated from these platforms to investigate human behaviour. In this paper we report the design and implementation of the RDV (Reddit Data Visualisation) platform, a visualisation tool aimed at facilitating the analysis of a publicly available Reddit dataset, which contains ~1.7 billion JSON objects collected from October 2007 to October 2015. RDV allows for researchers without advanced coding skills to easily analyse this dataset, while also providing a tailor-made platform to account for the intricacies of any dataset originating from Reddit. We showcase the features of the platform through two examples of data analysis using the Reddit dataset within the scope of Policy and Politics: 1) the 2015 nationwide ruling legalising same-sex marriage in the United States of America, and 2) the 2015 United Kingdom general elections. Finally, we conclude by discussing the need for better and simpler visualisation tools for researchers to analyse Big Online Behavioural Datasets, and report our ongoing work in this area.