Voices from the Digital Undercommons
Understanding the New Media of Student Life and Learning
This dissertation examines how CUNY’s digital campus communities evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic transition through computational analysis of Reddit discourse spanning 2011-2025.
Key Findings
- 290% Activity Spike in March 2020 during pandemic transition
- 222K+ Comments and 55K+ submissions across CUNY subreddits
- 88 Unique Evidence IDs tracked across three dissertation chapters
- 98 Analysis Reports documenting computational findings
- 24,270 Users in network sample across 8 CUNY communities
Dissertation Structure
Chapter 1: Context & Literature
Introduction, theoretical framework, and pre-pandemic baseline analysis establishing 11% late-night activity and tactical knowledge infrastructure.
14,000 words • 30 evidence IDs
Chapter 2: Macroscopic Analysis
Computational patterns including temporal dynamics, network reconstruction, and linguistic analysis of crisis discourse acceleration.
16-18,000 words • 5 evidence IDs • 18 analysis reports
Chapter 3: Microscopic Analysis
Ethnographic close reading of vernacular knowledge systems, tactical workarounds, and compound vulnerability discourse.
18-20,000 words • 68 evidence IDs • 44 analysis reports
Research Resources
- Research Process Feed: Chronological documentation of methodological discoveries and validation processes
- Evidence Index: Browse all 88 evidence items with full context and cross-references
- Analysis Reports: 98 computational analysis reports organized by chapter
- Bibliography: Complete works cited organized thematically
Methodology
This research employs user-centric scraping to bypass Reddit’s 1000-item API limitation, reconstructing complete participation histories of 24,270 users across 14 years. The methodology prioritizes data completeness through orphan recovery, capturing crisis-driven one-time posts that conventional sampling would exclude.
Data Architecture: Distributed SQLite databases (one per subreddit) with comprehensive orphan recovery achieving 98%+ completion rates.
Comparative Context
- CUNY: 273,702 posts across 8 federated communities (network density: 0.34)
- NYU: 174,396 posts (centralized model)
- Columbia: 97,797 posts (centralized model)
- Other Institutions: 272,193 posts (Fordham, St. John’s, etc.)
Navigation
Use the navigation bar above to explore chapters, evidence, and analysis reports. All evidence IDs are automatically cross-referenced and clickable throughout the site.
This Jekyll site was generated from markdown dissertation files and computational analysis outputs. All evidence IDs link to full context, and analysis reports include downloadable JSON data.