By Rich Robinson
Assistant News Editor
When President Barack Obama sat down at a computer on Aug. 29 to conduct an “Ask Me Anything” segment on Reddit and Redditors – the site’s users – tuned in from across the nation, the virtual crowd included several users who also post in a small corner of the fast-growing social news site dedicated to the University of Alabama community.
Reddit.com uses a simple, open-source format that allows for users to divide off into “subreddits,” topic- or community-centric portals from the main site denoted with an /r/ in the URL. Reddit.com/r/capstone, the UA-centric subreddit, hosts a community of more than 577 Redditors that share everything from Tuscaloosa News stories to plans for a meet-up and potluck in September.
The Crimson White decided to turn to Redditors—those with first-hand accounts of the president’s AMA—for their feedback on Obama’s AMA session by starting a new topic on the Capstone subreddit. AMA is Reddit jargon for “Ask me anything,” and refers to when a famous person opens up the virtual floor to questions from everyone on the site.
In their anonymous responses, the Alabama redditors were split on the their support of Obama’s Internet outreach.
User Chakrakhan responded first, voicing his or her opinion that it was a sign of the times.
“On the one hand, it was neat to see a new way that the government is reaching out to the people using the Internet,” chakrakhan said. “On the other hand, it was a way for the President to pander to his target demographic by selectively answering easy questions.”
Obama ended up only answering 10 questions in a thirty-minute session according to CNN.com, despite being asked thousands of questions seen by more than 1.8 million people who visited the thread as of Monday night. Obama responded to questions ranging from how he would work to help small businesses, increasing funding for the space program and about the recipe for the White House beer.
Chakrakhan, listed on the subreddit’s main page as the creator of the subreddit and moderator for the group, received 12 points from other users for his or her comments. The point system is based on an up-or-down voting function attached to every post, similar to a “Like” function on Facebook posts.
User hollymo93 agreed with chakrakhan that Obama was pandering.
“He was obviously just sort of pandering to the Internet with the whole ‘I know how much freedom of information is important to you guys’ and talking about how he’s a fan of NASA,” hollymo93 wrote in response. “I don’t know, I guess it just seemed a bit superficial, but he’s obviously getting publicity out of it, and that seemed like the intent.”
User wkj0002 wrote that he thought it was a great move by Obama to do the AMA.
“For the most part, reddit is in favor of Obama, and he saw this as an opportunity to connect to, and even gain, votes,” wkj0002 said. “He didn’t answer every question and carefully chose which to answer and which to ignore, but, as president, it has to be hard to get to some of these controversial questions.”
The Crimson White’s reddit experiment yielded 19 responses by press time over three days, including discussions stemming off users’ original comments. The /r/capstone subreddit includes links to a subreddit about Alabama sports, /r/rolltide, and one for the city and state, which are /r/tuscaloosa and /r/alabama respectively.
The /r/capstone group has a Facebook page with 93 members and is planning on holding its pot luck on Sept. 15 at the Riverwalk on the Black Warrior River.
