Can Bernie Sanders's Reddit Army Get Organized?
Reddit can foster close communities, but when its forums reach a certain size, they can also turn heated—and fast. The question for the Sanders movement is how to channel the best of Reddit—the friendly groups of like-minded nerds—without falling prey to its pitfalls. How do you turn the denizens of one of the most unruly corners of the Internet into a focused fighting force?
That question became pressing after the first Democratic debate aired on CNN in mid-October. When pundits everywhere hailed Clinton as the winner, and others (myself included) argued that Sanders had fallen short, the subreddit and every other social media channel went crazy with allegations that media was in the bag for Hillary Clinton. "Bernie wins EVERY poll yet CORPORATE MEDIA declares Hillary the winner !!!" one Sanders fan told me. “Are you blind or just bought? Grow a pair and admit the truth,” another wrote to Slate's Josh Voorhees. Conspiracy theories rapidly proliferated, alleging that major outlets were deliberately undercutting Sanders by suppressing favorable poll numbers and deleting pro-Bernie comments. “We have an explicit example of the corruption of money in politics," one Redditor wrote last week. "Time Warner is a top donor of Hillary Clinton and they own CNN, and CNN is censoring Bernie Sanders to alter his message."
The outcry prompted its own backlash among the forum’s users. “My fellow Berners," a Redditor wrote last week. "We need to chillax on the media conspiracy accusations. We are coming off like lunatics."
“Guys, if every damn thing that doesn't fit into praise for Bernie is going to be shouted down as a great big conspiracy, we are doomed,” another wrote. “This is absurd! Tone it down and accept it is a political race or we’re going to wind up under the bridge with Ron Paul's supporters.”
The post-debate episode raised alarms for Aidan King, a 23-year-old Vermonter who co-founded the subreddit with David Fredrick in December 2013, long before Sanders announced his candidacy. The debate backlash pushed campaign organizing for Bernie—which was the subreddit's original focus—to the margins. “It was distracting—it dominated the discussion to the point where if someone wanted to go out and talk about their experience putting up flyers they'd only receive five upvotes,” says King, referring to the site's system for users to rate posts.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123199/can-bernie-sanderss-reddit-army-get-organized
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