How The Current GA used Reddit to understand the election information needs of Coastal Georgians

This is a series on Better News to a) showcase innovative/experimental ideas that emerge from the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative and b) share replicable tactics that benefit the news industry as a whole. 

This “win” comes from Julia Capizzi, social media and reader engagement editor, and Susan Catron, managing editor, both of The Current GA, which participated in the UNC Table Stakes program in 2022 and UNC Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media’s Elections Funnel training for Table Stakes alumni in 2024.

Question: What problem were you trying to solve, and why was that problem strategically important to your organization?

Answer:  The Current GA is a nonprofit, investigative newsroom serving six counties in Coastal Georgia: Bryan, Camden, Chatham, Effingham, Glynn and McIntosh. 

As a news organization, we see this election cycle as a multifaceted opportunity. 

New readers will turn to The Current GA for information to help them feel empowered at the ballot box. They might be new to the area and unfamiliar with how voting works in Georgia, or they might be first-time voters altogether. 

When planning our election coverage, we set out not just to capture the attention of these new readers, but to keep it. We wanted to move them through the audience funnel, from first-time readers to newsletter subscribers and donors, with our election coverage being their gateway into our work. 

We have maintained a steady readership among readers over the age of 35, and we have the most room to grow among readers ages 18-24. Our major goal for this election cycle is to grow our readership among 18 to 24-year-olds by 10%, and to turn them into engaged readers of The Current GA. 

Q: How did you go about solving the problem?

A: We knew we’d have to meet our potential audience where they were already gathering. We are constantly looking to make ourselves visible to the community by attending events where people can meet our team and learn more about our mission and reporting. That includes potential collaborations with colleges and local businesses like bookstores. 

We are planning in-person events as part of our The Current Conversations series. The first event will be held at the College of Coastal Georgia in Brunswick in August. We plan to talk about voting and environmental policy with students and the wider community.

We knew that in order to build a faithful readership among our target demographic, we would need to listen to them to understand their information needs and the questions they have ahead of their local, state and national elections. We also wanted to expand our reach beyond in-person events by meeting our target audience online. Many 18- to 24-year-olds are already gathering on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Reddit. 

So, we developed two surveys. The first was a general social media survey, asking readers and potential readers where they get their news, which social media platforms they use to learn new information and what issues they care about most. 

The second survey focused on the upcoming primary and general elections. We wanted to know if respondents understand the basics of voting, like how to register to vote and where their local precinct is located. 

In both surveys, we asked for basic demographic information, like ZIP code and age, and included an optional field for respondents to share their email address so we could add them to our email list. 

In addition to sharing our surveys with our existing newsletter subscribers, we also shared them on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). We received about a dozen responses. This wasn’t the volume of responses we expected from social media, so we turned to Reddit. 

Reddit, a social media platform made up of hundreds of thousands of message boards known as subreddits, is a place for conversation. Anonymous users can share their most detailed thoughts and questions on countless different topics. An estimated 44% of Redditors are between the ages of 18 and 29, and the Savannah subreddit and Georgia subreddit boast about 50,000 and 204,000 Redditors, respectively, so we hypothesized that potential readers in our target audience would already be gathering on Reddit. 

Q: What worked?

A: Prior to sharing our surveys, we used Reddit to find sources for a story about mental healthcare at the Savannah College of Art and Design and to share important resources, like information on a petition for a zoning repeal on Sapelo Island and the definitions for different types of local government meetings. 

We knew that Reddit is a platform for conversation, not self-promotion. Many subreddits will delete posts or even ban your account if the moderators suspect that your goal is promoting your work, so we had to approach Reddit with the goal of engaging a wider, untapped audience in conversation, rather than driving traffic to our website. 

We posted our surveys to the Savannah subreddit and Georgia subreddit, emphasizing that our goal was to start a conversation where we could learn about Redditors’ questions and information gaps. 

Although members of the Savannah subreddit didn’t want to leave Reddit to answer our surveys, they did want to engage with us by sharing their questions in the comments of our general social media survey post. They wanted to know how their tax dollars are spent, why there’s so little affordable housing in Savannah, what’s behind the fees on their water bills and more. 

We responded to comments within minutes or hours of when they were posted. We told Redditors that we’d pass their questions to our reporters, and when relevant, we linked to any past stories related to their question or the topic they wanted to discuss. 

We received about 20 responses from Reddit, and our survey posts helped us start a conversation with Savannahians on the platform..

In addition to helping us start a conversation, Reddit also proved to be a great tool for visibility. Our survey post received 9,000 reviews and a 96% upvote (Reddit’s version of a like) rate in the first 48 hours. 

A screenshot of the post The Current GA made to a Savannah subreddit. (The Current GA)

Q: What didn’t work?

A:  While we wanted to use surveys to engage with the community and learn more about our target demographic’s information needs, we walked away from this experiment wondering whether Reddit is the best place to collect survey responses. 

Redditors are hesitant to leave the platform to answer a survey. In our experience, they were more willing to discuss their information needs in the comments of our post. 

We were also unable to collect demographic information, like ZIP code and age, in the volume that we expected. In the future, we plan to post open-ended questions and monitor how people respond.  

We also hoped that Reddit would be a useful way for us to gain more newsletter subscribers, but because Redditors preferred to stay on the platform and remain anonymous, it is difficult to track if the Redditors we conversed with moved through the audience funnel and converted to readers and subscribers. 

It’s also important to note that we were unable to collect survey responses or engage with Redditors in the Georgia subreddit because the automoderator flagged and removed our post for self-promotion. We can avoid similar issues in the future by reaching out to the moderators for approval before posting in the subreddit. 

Q: What happened that you didn’t expect?

A: We predicted that Redditors would be engaged, but we didn’t expect the volume of engagement and comments that we received. 

Q: What advice would you give to others who try to do this?

A: We recommend assigning someone on your team with the task of monitoring the conversation on your Reddit posts. Reddit is not a place where you can make a post and then leave. Not every post will result in dozens of comments, but be prepared to respond to Redditors and keep a detailed record of what they say. 

The comments on our Reddit posts have given us story tips, put us in touch with potential sources, informed our voter guide and helped us monitor the issues that matter to Coastal Georgians. 

Q: What’s next for this work?

A: We will continue to post on Reddit, sharing our questions for the community as well as resources for civic engagement. Because we found that Redditors seem hesitant to leave the platform to answer a survey, we want to experiment with how they respond to open-ended questions instead. 

Our goal is to use Reddit in every step of the reporting process, from pre-reporting through publication. We want to create a feedback loop with Redditors, where we ask them for their input and questions, and then share how their comments helped inform our reporting.

We also want to find a way to measure success on Reddit. We want to track whether Redditors are moving through the audience funnel and whether they are converting to readers and newsletter subscribers. 

As the November election approaches, we hope to become a regular fixture in the Savannah and Georgia subreddits and to establish The Current GA as a valuable community resource to Coastal Georgians on Reddit and beyond.