Psychosocial Portraits of Participation in a Virtual World: A Comparative Analysis of Roles and Motives Across Three Different Professional Development Subreddits

Work and learning are essential facets of our existence, yet women continue to face multiple restrictions that hinder and impede their professional outcomes. These restrictions are especially pronounced in the technical domains of Information technology and Computer science. This paper explores the power of informal online communities to act as a collective shield of care and support in resisting and disrupting gender-based barriers. By comparing three professional development forums on Reddit, we explore the emergent social roles and how these engender community extending support, solidarity, and collective enrichment. Through a novel exploration of psychosocial linguistic markers, we identify four roles and outline key signatures delineating differing motives, intent, and commitment to the community. Expanding prior research that distinguishes between communal and agentic dispositions of actors in online communities, we postulate how these emergent roles characterize a spectrum of communal vs. agentic behaviors that set the contour of conversation and type of care practices supported by the forums. Depending on these forums’ underlying relational affinity traits, these roles can focus on knowledge sharing, depicting a weaker communal link, or a more collective close-knit bond that furthers support, empowerment, and resilience-building initiatives. Novel insights also offer inferences about automated actors’ position within communities and influence on community norms and values. Cumulatively, these insights can have crucial implications for online discussion forums’ design and policy-related issues, especially towards empowering and emboldening professional development initiatives for minoritized groups such as women.