The Community We Chose & Why 🌎

Be sure to click here for some key terms and definitions for this section!

The social media learning community we have chosen to analyze is the r/PixelArt Subreddit on Reddit. We chose to analyze r/PixelArt because, with 2.6 million members, it is one of Reddit’s top 1% most popular subreddits. It is also a very active community with new posts being made nearly every hour! A screenshot of the r/PixelArt homepage is below:

We also thought that r/PixelArt would be a good social media learning community to analyze for this assignment, as it is a community where anyone interested in pixel art, regardless of experience level, can post about it. We thought the interactions between beginners and experts in a creative field would be interesting to analyze, and we were also curious to see what we could learn about pixel art, as none of us are that familiar with it!

Additionally, the Subreddit is public, meaning that truly anyone (even those who are not members of the subreddit) can view, post, upvote posts, downvote posts, and comment in the community. It is still beneficial (and obviously very common!) to become a member of the Subreddit (which Redditors can do by clicking the “join” button on the top right of the screen), though, because Redditors are notified of updates in r/PixelArt (including new posts and comments).

Modes of Interaction 💬

Many redditors who post in r/PixelArt create posts and comments that ask for feedback on their pixel art, share tips or resources for creating pixel art, or ask for help in creating it. However, most of the posts in the subreddit contain pixel art that redditors have created and simply want to share. An example of a post like this can be seen below:

Content-Sharing Practices 📖

The Subreddit has the following 10 rules for being a member, and these are enforced by the Subreddit’s moderators:

  1. Must be Pixel Art
    • “Art must be pixel art, at least partially. If you post an album of pictures, the first one must be pixel art.”
  2. OC Content
    • “We ask for all images to be posted by the original creator (OC). If anyone has concerns about artwork being posted to this sub without your permission, please reach out to the mod team so we can address the issue.”
  3. Be Civil
    • “Don’t do anything that might make someone feel unwelcome, such as insulting, being overly vulgar, instigating, trolling, etc. (critique is allowed, but must be constructive). Don’t start drama or target other users. Aggressive harassment will be reported to the admins and could result in site-wide suspension.”
  4. No Self-Promotion
    • “We do not allow posts or comments that are self-promotion. This includes: shop links, merchandise, tip jars, fundraising, promos, coupon codes, or advertisements.”
  5. No NFT related posts
    • “This includes posting art made for NFTs, linking to NFTs, asking to hire people for NFTs, or anything else NFT related.”
  6. No sexual/nude content
    • “Images which are overtly sexual or contain nudity is not allowed. Censored / altered versions of these images are not allowed.”
  7. No AI Art
    • “Art created with AI, partially or fully is not allowed”
  8. Account must be older than 2 weeks to post
    • “You can only post if your account is older than 2 weeks, no exceptions.”
  9. No Outrage/Controversial/Drama Posts
    • “If your post does or is likely to upset people or stir up outrage/drama, whether intentional or not, it will be removed. This includes witchhunts and politics”
  10. 100 karma is required to POST.

Community Norms 💡

r/PixelArt is, overall, a supportive, uplifting environment, with the majority of interactions being positive and helpful. Below are two screenshots from the Subreddit. The first is of a post where a beginner asks for feedback on their pixel art and the second is of one of the comments on that post where another Redditor provides feedback.

As you can see, the expert (the Redditor that commented) provided kind, constructive, detailed, well-explained criticism that is well-received by the beginner (the Redditor that made the original post with an “OP” next to their username). These kinds of friendly, useful interactions form the bulk of what we’ve seen on r/PixelArt!