The Perpetuation of Western Dominance through Online Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Reddit Comment Threads

Abstract

Chen and Dai (2012) make the claim that just as the Western world dominates the physical world it also dominates the online world. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how and to what extent Reddit comment threads contribute to patterns of Western dominance in online settings. This thesis uses a critical approach to intercultural communication to understand how the New Media site Reddit allows for the dissemination of power and the naturalization of inequality through online comments (Bouvier & Machin, 2017). Posts regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, in the timeframe wherein it was still associated with the non-Western country, China, is used as a fixed point of reference to measure the projection of Western dominance in the predisposed Western oriented subReddit community r/Europe. Reddit comment threads are analyzed using Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis, using Ng’ambi’s (2008) application to New Media studies to find how discursive practices are exhibited in the specific subReddit. Results indicate that discursive practices identified in the comment threads operate within a social sphere that reinforce patterns of Western dominance as majority values while simultaneously discouraging non-majority values and therefore perpetuating online Western dominance through Reddit user comment threads.