In January 2024 alone, there were 7.57 billion visits to Reddit. There are 2.8 million subreddits with discussions on everything imaginable — from r/cats to r/memes and one of our personal favorites, r/dataisbeautiful.
These numbers in billions and millions are indicative of Reddit as one of the largest online communities in the world; which makes it a ripe, ripe field for data extraction.
The question is, with so many comments, posts, and threads, how do you collect Reddit data at scale? Enter, web scraping.
Whether it’s following popular debates over decades, social monitoring for your brand, tuning in to your customers’ pain points, or keeping a pulse on cultural shifts — scraping data from Reddit is the new way to consolidate research in the gold-rush age of information.
Buckle in, you’re about to learn how powerful data from Reddit can be.
What is Reddit Sentiment Analysis?
Let’s say you want to buy a new pair of sneakers from Nike as soon as they launch. For this, you’ll want to know what the overall sentiment is towards the product on subreddits like r/Nike and /sneakers.
You can collect this data by scraping the subreddits and analyzing the tone of the posts and comments — are they largely positive, negative, or neutral?
This is Reddit sentiment analysis. You’ll notice that it’s beneficial for both, the customer and the brand in this case. There’s a high chance some (sneak-y) people from Nike will be monitoring the same subreddits for reactions to their product launch.
You research the brand, they research your feedback.
How do I Scrape Reddit Data?
No code? No problem. You needn’t be a master coder to conduct your very own Reddit sentiment analysis. A lot of people scrape Reddit with Python, but at Grespr, we’re friends with everyone. Especially non-programmers.
When you use no-code web scraping tools like Grepsr, the data extraction process is simplified through automation.
The process works in two ways:
- The URL method: Enter URLs to scrape specific pages quickly. A web scraper will automatically collect all available data from a page based on its URL.
- Point-and-click interface: Customize the parts of your website you want to scrape with a visual, point-and-click interface. Drag and drop elements to target the exact data parameters you need.
We recommend reading the official Reddit API (Application Programming Interface) documentation that allows you to access posts, comments, and user information from specific subreddits or the entire platform while being respectful of Reddit’s guidelines.
Real-life Case Studies: The Power of Reddit Data
Think of scraping Reddit as actually finding the needle in the haystack. From hard-to-reach demographics to unofficial public discussions, Reddit’s anonymized platform is a goldmine for market research.
Curious? Let’s find out.
1. Public Perception of ChatGPT
Background: In a study by Lingkopin University, researchers explored how big public announcements affected the frequency of discussions on the subreddit r/ChatGPT between its launch and the 31st of March 2023.
Objective: Analyze the discussions surrounding ChatGPT, observing how they have evolved over time, and identifying significant events relating to them.
Methodology: A PushShift API collected nearly 500,000 posts about ChatGPT from Reddit. Next, it used a tool called BERTopic to find out what people talked about in these posts.
Findings: Major ChatGPT events, like Microsoft investing and integrating Bing, were correlated with spikes in Reddit activity and shifts in discussion topics. Additionally, broader subject categories like “Education” and “Jobs” emerged over time in discussions across multiple subreddits.
Conversely, conversations around specific topics like “Bing” were more concentrated in directly relevant subreddits. “Bing” discussions spiked in response to events related to ChatGPT’s integration with the search engine, rather than emerging organically.
What does this case study reveal?
- First, Reddit’s ability to stimulate conversations, both, organic, and in response to real-time world events, is immense. An insight into evolving public opinion around new technology – raw and unfiltered – is invaluable to identify sentiment trends and pivot points.
- Second, Reddit sentiment is highly reactive to real-world developments. This means that you can track public interest almost instantly by observing spikes in Reddit activity.
2. Reddit Web Scraping for Social Good – JUUL
Remember JUUL? The company came under fire for fueling the teenage vaping crisis and its products were banned in June 2022.
Interestingly, a study published in JMIR Publications in 2019 scraped data from Reddit, particularly two subreddits, r/UnderageJuul and r/JUUL, and proved the value of social media mining for public health surveillance.
Background: JUUL rapidly became popular with the youth but their methods of acquisition, preferences, and patterns of use were largely unknown.
Objective: Scrape Reddit for social media data to fill in knowledge gaps about underage JUUL use.
Methodology: Researchers scraped Reddit posts and comments from 716 threads and 2935 comments from the now-banned subreddit r/UnderageJuul before.
Findings: There were r/UnderageJuul users as young as 13, with the most popular flavors being those of JUUL’s official line: mango, mint, and cucumber. The threads mentioned seven discreet ways to get JUUL products, the most common of which was buying it from other Reddit users.
By scraping Reddit, the study was able to find key information related to demographics, product preferences, and illegal approaches to access, on an otherwise notoriously difficult section to research.
This, folks, is the power of web scraping Reddit.
3. How Brands Use Reddit – Laneige
Laneige is a Korean skin-care beauty company that has one of the highest brand mentions in Reddit’s most popular communities – r/skincareaddiction with 2.2. million members, and r/AsianBeauty, with 1.9 million members.
A senior manager at Laneige, Shrija Pandya, has clearly made the most of web scraping Reddit and monitoring her brand’s presence on the platform: “We knew the beauty communities on Reddit are so strong, and that they have a strong affinity toward beauty and skin care.”
Laneige made its official entry into Reddit with promotional ads just last year, but as you’ll see, their brand mentions on subreddits date back six years.
The beauty giant’s goal on Reddit was to promote brand awareness, and increase purchase consideration and intent. They succeeded – achieving 50% higher click-through rates and 42% higher completion rates for six-second videos than Reddit’s beauty vertical benchmark.
4. Lessons from AMAs – Audi
Reddit AMAs – “Ask Me Anything” – are sessions with community experts who host a Q&A format of interaction with the followers in their community. Say, if Lewis Hamilton were to answer your burning questions about fast cars in the r/Formula1 subreddit. (Like can you really drive F1 cars upside down?)
AMAs are fertile data grounds for social media mining for brands, businesses, and marketers:
- They help you gauge public perception and reaction to your services and products in real-time
- AMAs highlight pain points in customer journeys that wouldn’t otherwise be noticed
- They cement relationships by building credibility and humanizing the brand
Audi, like almost every other big-name car brand, has its own Reddit community. They created “Think Faster – The World’s Fastest AMA” – taking place at a whopping 130 MPH with a 30-minute segment each.
The challenge was for celebrities like Olivia Munn, Adam Scott, and Issa Rae to hold onto their lunches while they answered questions in real-time through Reddit comments.
The campaign was a wild success, so much so that even Reddit’s founder, Alexis Ohanian tweeted his excitement. Audi’s director of marketing in America, Ken Bracht, said: “From a messaging standpoint, we want viewers to get a feeling of what it’s like behind the wheel of an RS 5 Coupe at speed.”
And oh, they did.
The AMA has been hosted three times since 2014, with a total of 2 million views, over 6000 comments, and countless features in magazines.
Ready to Web Scrape Reddit?
Reddit is a barometer for public opinion and market trends, whether you’re a brand, a marketer, or just plain curious. Monitoring relevant subreddits can give you a front-row view into what’s going on in your corner of the world.
Don’t miss the gold rush of information in the 21st century – get scrapin’ today with Grepsr!
