Pro-Choice Movements on Reddit: What Is Their Key To Success?

In many parts of the world today, women do not have access to abortions as they are made illegal in these countries. Having an abortion means making the conscious choice to end the pregnancy, for whatever reason that might be necessary. Many  women do not have this reproductive agency, frequently resulting in unsafe situations. Female reproductive health care is thus no constitutional right in multiple nations, as for instance in half of the United States abortion it has been discussed to be banned multiple times already (Guarnieri & Nash, 2023). A lot of individuals protest for the right to abort by participating in marches, but this movement is also highly visible on online platforms through digital activism. Digital activism is an increasingly effective manner to resist the prevailing laws and therefore argue for the right of humans to have the freedom to choose abortion. Individuals that make themselves visible as being "pro-choice", are possibly relevant within political discourse around abortion rights and female reproductive care. Assumably, many long for a transformation regarding access to abortion globally. 

A solution might emerge that finds its core in platforms allowing users to connect, making it a place for pro-choice advocates to join their forces. The power behind these online pro-choice communities and how their success is constructed, is thus relevant to investigate. What is their key to success? The online forum Reddit and its r/prochoice subreddit have ensured a place for a community of users that share the same values surrounding this movement. To examine the process behind this, I will compare the themes within the most upvoted posts with the ones in the most downvoted posts on Reddit. This social movement will be viewed through theories about connective action and collective identity. 

Connective Action

Bennett and Segerberg (2012) give some patterns in which digital action groups construct "connective action" (p. 742). Connective action is mainly about the underlying power that is spread evenly over platforms, meaning that its influence does not come from one single source. Possible consequences of this division of power, are advantages in any kind of problem in society, in this case influencing the political field. That is, after individuals in certain communities start taking action, connecting in this process. Namely, these groups aim at  broader public engagement by using digital media and easy-to-personalize action themes. Often, they even use social technologies to make individuals share a message with their networks. This second approach “entails technology platforms and applications taking the role of established political organizations” (2012, p.742). In this approach, people thus share their political demands and complaints through personal stories onlinein a personalized and digitally mediated  format. Connective action formations thus have the potential to  work much better than previous, more individually disconnected, approaches. These so-called connective action movements are “highly decentralized—powered by the crowd rather than a few leaders” (Shahin, 2023, p. 738). However, the small number of central  users that are highly powerful and influential across the network contradicts this. Shahin and Ng (2021) argue that the supposed strengths of connective action do not outweigh the importance of collective identity in making digital movements succeed (p. 532). Collective identity is, contrary to connective action, not about underlying power but about a sense of shared identity in a group. It emerges from sharing experiences, or virtues, making the group different from other ones. The core values of the individuals within this community correspond, and this feeling of belonging to something outside of themselves is very strong for many. This sense might lead to motivation to take action as a group, which will likely be far more successful than individual power. This collective identity through which users form solidarity within a community through identifying with each other and sharing values, is crucial (Shahin, 2023, p.738). 

Literature review: pro-choice activism

Some prior research has already been done regarding pro-choice activism on online platforms. Particularly relevant is information on research on Reddit, as it directly relates to my own. Latchana (2023) studied 75 posts from the subreddit r/abortionresources to identify themes of discussion (p. 1). Reddit is, more than any other platform, a place for users to share their experiences and thus informs users about the discussion around abortion online (2023, p. 3). The goal of this research is to make a public understand amongst others: “factors that potentially drive individuals to engage in abortion-related discussions on Reddit” (2023, p.4). This was of great influence for what I aimed for during my own research, finding its core message in the importance of factors within discussions on Reddit. As for the results of this research, Latachana (2023) identified six major themes in the posts in the subreddit: "Access to Abortion Resources and Services, Pre-abortion Concerns, Abortion Experiences, Emotional Support, Post-Abortion Concerns, and Advice on Relationship and Family Issues" (2023, 42). Of all these categories, the most common theme is "Abortion Experiences" in which users share their personal stories with 20 out of 75 being dedicated to this (2023, p. 54). The least popular theme is "Advice on Family" or "Relationship Issues" in relation with histories of hiding abortion stories, as only 7 posts were dedicated to this (2023, p. 58). The outcomes and content of posts that Latachana (2023) deals with in her text gave me a clear idea of what direction to think in when filtering themes.

Valdez et al. (2024) used professional methods to find themes in r/Abortion and r/AbortionDebate subreddits, after which they performed both sentiment and emotion analysis on the same data set. In that manner they were able to identify the tone of the message as positive, negative or neutral as well as the emotional potential amount of emotionality in each post (2024). Each are useful methods to gain a better understanding of the way people interpret the discussion around abortion. However, I came to the conclusion that the sentiment in the messages will not be so important for my own research. That is because I am actually looking for an understanding of how a pro-choice movement can be successful on Reddit. So for me especially interesting was finding themes within a subreddit to get an idea of what kind of submissions, comments or replies either match or clash with the public opinion. This will become visible by their scores on Reddit, and will eventually provide information on what kind of theories construct the belonged final success of the movement. In the specific research of Valdez et al. (2024) they found ten themes of which the most common was sharing support with 18% of all the selected posts. Again, this is all about sharing personal experiences as a means to help others with similar problems. Besides the social aspects, abortion is also discussed in an objective or formative way which forms another large theme (2024). 

Research design

The datapoints for this research were collected from the platform Reddit, using Communalytic.org on 3 May 2024. To collect the data that are relevant to this research about the Pro-Choice movement, I used the subreddit r/prochoice. As the maximum number of recent submissions for this subreddit, I selected 200. In addition, I selected the option to collect corresponding comments and replies. As Communalytic had conducted the data collection, 2931 records were available to me on this day. I downloaded the dataset into an Excel file and selected the column that contains data about the score of the post on Reddit. The calculated score is based on the sum of the upvotes and downvotes. A submission, comment or reply generally receives upvotes from anyone who likes the content and downvotes from anyone who does not agree with the content. If it, for example, a post receives many upvotes and merely any downvotes, the score is a relatively high positive number. However, when there are more downvotes than upvotes, the score is a low negative number. The score indicates whether or not the content was well received the public. The highest and lowest scores of the collection are now visible. Afterwards, I added the 20 posts with the highest score to a different sheet in Excel and did the same for the 20 posts with the lowest score. The highest score is 957, while the lowest score is –27. Logically, all 20 of the posts with the highest score are submissions, while the posts with the lowest score are merely comments and replies. I tried to find central themes in these two extremes by analyzing the submissions, comments and replies. In both categories, I found central themes. The difference between these themes holds the potential for declaring the construction of connective action or collective identity. The key findings of this analysis will further be discussed.

Reddit

 To track down what kind of submissions on Reddit get a lot of positive attention given their high score, I found three central themes in these 20 comments:

The political issue of abortion

With a clear lead, submissions regarding the political issue of abortion being legal or illegal are the most popular. 40% of these top posts are about laws, birth or fertility rates, Trump and so forth. Within this political theme, subjects come to light such as the laws in different countries all over the world. Although many countries allow abortion, still far too many do not.  For instance underdeveloped countries, but mostly, to many’s worry, the United States. Consequently, almost all of these submissions are about politics in the United States, such as: "U.S. fertility rate dropped to lowest in a century as births dipped in 2023" (Observa, 2024) and "The GOP came for Roe, and they're coming for birth control next" (Stock-Disaster-8388, 2024). People like to engage in this political discourse or contribute to this by showing their upvotes.

The pro-life debate and the medical side of abortion

The other two central themes that I have distinguished have an equal percentage of the submissions dedicated to them, each 20%. One of these consists of messages directly aimed at pro-life advocates, with amongst others the submission with the highest score. It says: “Hey pro-lifers, this is the consequence of your actions” (BigClitMcphee, 2024) with a repost of a picture presenting how a woman had to bleed for 10 days because the emergency room staff did not want to break the rules of the abortion law.  

Reddit

The other 20% is specifically about emergency rooms, clinics and healthcare working on abortion. Those are submissions with relatively lower scores in this category. The remaining submissions do not belong to any theme and are more arbitrary.  

Controversy within the pro-choice community

As for the comments and replies that have very low scores and are experienced very negatively, I found merely one real theme in these 20 comments. There are, like in the highest score category, some comments related to politics. One of them is for instance about the distinction between the Republican and Democratic Party in relation to the abortion issue, but it states that at the end of the day, both are just as corrupt (StarlightPleco, 2024). However, this was only 10% of all comments, which is why I did not count this as a theme. This difference is however remarkable. Likewise, there were one or two comments that might have come from “the opponent”, pro-life advocates, but it is barely worth mentioning. That is particularly notable as I would have expected that it was precisely these comments that would be experienced so negatively. Very striking is that nearly all the downvoted comments and replies actually come from pro-choice advocates. Mostly, the comments form a slightly different opinion on the submission, for instance: "I absolutely support access to contraceptives and abortion for university students. But people who were too dumb to get into university, or too anti-education to apply, or too poor to afford university need contraceptives and abortion even more" (BostonFigPudding, 2024). Although this comment does take a similar stance, apparently users do not like the tone or perspective in this statement, even if it is meant for the same purposes. It is mostly the controversy that comes forward here, because of individuals that act slightly more extreme than the regular pro-choice advocate. Those individuals begin to argue that a certain group of people is stupid, and tend to get a little disrespectful. It seems, not illogically, that the general public does not like these attitudes. This same problem is visible as well in approximately ten other comments. Individuals are being responded to negatively because not everyone thinks the same way. There are some detailed requirements to contribute to constructing the collective identity, which can also be observed by the subreddit's own website rulebook:

Reddit

Connective action and collective identities

Taking into account the results of this research, a declaration of the most common themes within the most upvoted scores could lie in the theory of connective action. 40% of the results of this category were particularly about one theme: politics. Bennett and Segerberg (2012) have seen that connective action uses easy-to-personalize action themes (p.742). Pro-choice movements, in this case, performed on Reddit, very much rely on easy-to-personalize action themes. Individuals can reflect on their own experiences and beliefs surrounding this theme while at the same time participating in digital activism. This can occur through sharing personal stories about abortion or using hashtags such as #ProChoice. Regularly, political preferences or positions are highly visible in this, indicating an individual's goal to spread the message around. This theory about connective action would thus apply to the fact that politics is the main theme within the category of upvoted posts. 

To compare my results with the research of both Latachana (2023) and Valdez et al. (2024), they both showed that the largest part of the posts within abortion subreddits was dedicated to sharing personal experiences. Individuals doing this, already participate in digital activism as political stances become automatically visible. Valdez et al. (2024) also mention that sharing experiences happened not only from a personal perspective, but also from an informative perspective. That can be linked to my conclusion mentioned above, as politics as the largest theme in this research supports the theory of connective action.

Yet, Shahin (2023) gives an argument against the expected success of connective action by stating that now only these few central users or main themes hold any power or are influential (p. 738). It is remarkable that in the category of downvotes, there are hardly any comments or replies related to politics. This remark forms the main difference between my research and the ones of Latachana (2023) and Valdez et al. (2024), as they focus on everything related to sharing personal stories in the name of helping others, but completely seem to forget about what kind of things do not help people at all and even cause debate. They merely focus on a main theme of influence, while it shows in my research that actually making activism a success takes more than that.

Namely, among these downvoted posts are many that consist of pro-choice content, but with different assumptions about this topic. Through these statements that users give, it becomes clear that their beliefs and values differ from the ones of others in the subreddit: there is a clear collective identity present that excludes individuals who do not completely join this. Important is that this collective identity is maintained by sharing values to eventually form a solidarity by widely spreading this identity around. A way to do this is not only contributing to the collective identity with your personal beliefs but also going against contradictory beliefs by showing negative responses. Connective action theories only rely on a few central things (p. 738) but fail to construct solidarity for a group. While politics-themed submissions receive positive attention, they do not have the strength or the capacity to maintain collective identity. So these posts, despite their many upvotes, do not offer a valuable contribution, but are rather interacted with on the superficial level of giving upvotes. The posts with many downvotes on the other side, indicate much more that there actually is a collective identity. Namely, people downvote and thus exclude comments that are not tolerated within this collective identity. 

So, what is the key to the success of pro-choice movements on Reddit? Connective action is all about the underlying power that is spread in an equal way over platforms, having the potential to transform political aspects. Collective identity, on the other hand, is about sharing values and supporting others with similar experiences, consisting of a real identity as a specific group that is unlike any other. Spreading small amounts of power without really joining forces, will never outweigh the enormous strength a community as a whole might hold and its potential positive consequences. It is likely that eventually constructing a collective identity has more chance at making digital activism a success than centralized strategies aiming for connectivity.                                                                                                                                                                          

References

Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). THE LOGIC OF CONNECTIVE ACTION: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 739–768. 

BigClitMcphee (2024, April 18). Hey pro-lifers, this is the consequence of your actions [Thumbnail with picture attached] [Online forum comment]. Reddit. 

BostonFigPudding (2024, April 19). I absolutely support access to contraceptives and abortion for university students. But people who were too dumb to get into [Online forum comment]. Reddit. 

Guarnieri, I. & Nash, E. (2023). Six Months Post-Roe, 24 US States Have Banned Abortion or Are Likely to Do So: A Roundup. Guttmacher Institute.  

Latchana, J. P. (2023). Roe v. Wade Overturned: An Analysis of Themes in Reddit Posts and Public Interviews (Master's thesis, Florida Atlantic University).

Observa. (2024, April 25). U.S. fertility rate dropped to lowest in a century as births dipped in 2023 [Thumbnail with link attached] [Online forum post]. Reddit. 

Shahin, S., & Ng, Y. M. M. (2022). Connective action or collective inertia? Emotion, cognition, and the limits of digitally networked resistance. Social Movement Studies, 21(4), 53.

Shahin, S. (2023). Affective polarization of a protest and a counterprotest: Million MAGA March v. Million Moron March. American behavioral scientist, 67(6), 735-756.  

StarlightPleco (2024, April 20). It’s because people wouldn’t have their votes held hostage to the Democratic Party. There is too much money to be [Online forum post]. Reddit. 

Stock-Disaster-8388. (2024, April 23). The GOP came for Roe, and they're coming for birth control next [Thumbnail with picture attached] [Online forum post]. Reddit. 

Valdez, D., Mena-Meléndez, L., Crawford, B. L., & Jozkowski, K. N. (2024). Analyzing Reddit forums specific to abortion that yield diverse dialogues pertaining to medical information seeking and personal worldviews: data mining and natural language processing comparative study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 26, e47408.