Reddit Resurrections (2008 – 2013)

Idea in one sentence

How do clever title rewrites and community hops keep the same image alive on Reddit for years?

Dataset

File	Rows	Description
redditSubmissions	~132 k	2008‑2013 reposts dump from SNAP – one row per submission
redditHtmlData	132 k HTML files	full markup for every submission (title, score, comments, sidebar metadata)

Why it’s interesting

• The SNAP set tracks the same image_id across all reposts, letting us measure lifecycles.
• By scraping comment trees & sidebar data we can enrich the plain CSV with conversation depth and subreddit age – aspects untouched in earlier studies (e.g., Lakkaraju et al., ICWSM 2013).

Planned analyses (3‑D lens)

Track	Possible Questions
1. Static	How many times is a typical image reposted? Does a bigger title change = higher new score?
2. Network	Which subreddits act as “revival hubs” that re‑export old images to the rest of Reddit?
3. Temporal	Did the half‑life of viral images shrink from 2008 to 2013 as audience attention sped up?

No hypotheses baked in yet – we’ll let the data tell us whether title rewrites, community hops or time windows drive resurgence.