The Telegraph gears up to cover the US election on Reddit

In a nutshell:

• The Telegraph is using Reddit to build engaged online communities, posting into select groups and providing live access to specialised journalists
• Reddit is a hotbed for US audiences, a key market for the UK news organisation
• The US election is the opportunity to fructify strategies and reputation built over 18 months on the platform

The Telegraph has spent the last 18 months building a reputation on Reddit, in preparation for the US election on 5 November 2024.

The UK news organisation started on Reddit in early 2023 because there are about 570m Americans using the platform every month, and about 1.2 billion overall.

It is also a social network where reputation prevails over popularity, according to senior social media editor Rachel Duffy speaking on the Journalism.co.uk podcast.

Karma is not always a bitch

Reputation is expressed on Reddit in karma: posts and comments which are positively upranked by users due to how useful they are. Karma is an indication of posting in good faith and it is how users gauge how trustworthy accounts are. 

The Telegraph has nearly 1.9m combined karma, and there are a few ways it has built up that metric. Users can follow accounts (indicated by u/) but is not really the important metric.

"No one is following people to stay updated on them, but they are joining communities," Duffy says. "It's very community-led."

Duffy adds that you cannot expect to find value on Reddit if you are not willing to provide it first. To build trust, The Telegraph often shares substantial portions of articles directly on Reddit rather than simply posting headlines with links. And it has even lifted out content from paywalled content.

However, the platform's value comes from engaged communities called subreddits (indicated by a r/). Some of them are fairly niche and maybe a little absurd (r/breadstapledtotrees with 300k members) and some are broad and densely populated (like r/worldnews with 42m members). The Telegraph is sharing its reporting on all sorts, like the Ukraine war, the cricket world cup, reviews of the Super Mario Bros Movie, and so on.

Subreddits are managed by moderators, who enforce community rules. This is important for news publishers especially because anyone hoping to go in and spam news links will get booted out quite quickly.

Elections

Reddit has been used to build authority around general elections in France and the UK this year. Particularly effective strategies are "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) sessions, where Telegraph journalists answer community questions through the access and knowledge they have acquired.

Moderators will not allow just anybody to do this. This is where reputation matters. In the past, it required up to two weeks of negotiation to arrange an AMA.

For the US election, The Telegraph has been more selective and did just one flagship AMA on the powerful subreddit r/politics (with 8m members).

It has also been targeting swing states, like New York and Pennsylvania, as well as posting in different political groups like r/conservative. This feeds in naturally with its US newsletter and reporting section.

In a follow-up interview with Duffy, she said the 2024 US election is more driven by personalities than the UK election. For that reason, there is greater effort in reporting the narratives of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Follow the conversation on 27 November at our digital journalism conference Newsrewired in London, where The Telegraph will lead a workshop about creating content with communities. Check out the full agenda and grab your ticket today

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