This paper examines the affordances of Reddit, a digital media platform where Users share and discuss content. The aim of the study was to understand the affordances of Reddit, and how the affordances of Reddit through various features of the platform lead to outcomes, specifically those relating to political loyalty and the creation of political narratives. The study contributes an insight into the evolution and understanding of affordances as a result of examining the ways in which individuals who were previously members of another political group constructed narratives around switching their support to the Trump campaign in the 2016 US presidential elections. The study specifically focusses on an exclusive membership community called r/The_Donald. As a result of analysing posts on common themes using Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA), we conclude that the features enable membership of a community to be rewarded, switched or denied. As a result, this study has identified five affordances of Reddit, which include credibility, expressing oneself freely, echoing beliefs, creating membership and the meta-affordance ‘Redpilling’. The outcomes of these affordances are that ingroups are created, support can be switched, extreme or hateful views are legitimised and a new brand of conservatism is given credibility. This in turn is concluded to have realised impacts outside of the virtual environment in this case on the self-reported behaviours of voters.

本文研究了Reddit（一个供用户共享和讨论内容的数字媒体平台）的功能。该研究的目的是了解Reddit的功能，以及Reddit的功能如何通过平台的各种功能导致结果，特别是那些与政治忠诚和政治叙事有关的结果。这项研究通过考察先前曾是另一个政治团体成员的个人围绕支持者在2016年美国总统选举中转而支持特朗普竞选活动构建叙事方式的方式，为人们对津贴的演变和理解提供了深刻见解。该研究专门针对名为r / The_Donald的独家会员社区。通过使用定性内容分析（QCA）分析常见主题的帖子的结果，我们得出结论，这些功能使社区成员资格得到奖励，转换或拒绝。结果，本研究确定了Reddit的五项服务，包括信誉，自由表达自己，表达信仰，建立会员资格以及元负担的“ Redpilling”。这些能力的结果是建立了群体，可以交换支持，使极端或可憎的观点合法化，并赋予了保守主义新品牌信誉。得出的结论是，在这种情况下，虚拟环境已经对选民的自我报告行为产生了影响。