schotastic

Who is the target audience of your dissertation? Reddit admin? Redditors? Media studies scholars? Habermas scholars? Sociology of technology scholars?

And what are you trying to tell this audience?

I ask because your thesis sounds totally obvious to me. None of these ideas should come as any surprise to most Redditors. So I'm guessing your intended audience isn't reddit. Are you using your observations of reddit to problematize or challenge an entrenched idea in existing scholarship? If so, I'd be very curious to hear more about that.

Hmm. So these other scholars see the Internet as this utopia within which we can engage in flawless discourse? That certainly is strange. I'm not a communications scholar but online discourse strikes me as a breeding ground for all manner of miscommunication (case in point: email).

Bit doubtful that people out there actually think we can get better quality discourse on the Internet than in person. I like that I can exchange ideas with people from across the globe on reddit and other forums, but I'm under no delusion that the quality of discourse will be very good, or even comparable to face-to-face interaction.