Video Games and the Creation of Virtual Communities: A Case Study of Mortal Kombat on Reddit

This article analyzes the online Mortal Kombat community on Reddit, focusing on the franchise’s followers and their interaction dynamics. It examines Reddit’s role as a platform for information exchange among various interest groups. A mixed-methods approach was adopted for this study. From a qualitative perspective, virtual ethnography was applied to explore user interactions, their responses to posts, and the expressions of humor present in the forum. Complementarily, a quantitative approach was employed through content analysis of posts and the interactions they generated. The literature review revealed a limited number of studies dedicated to analyzing virtual communities on specific platforms. However, some relevant works served as references for the development of this research. The objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive perspective on the functioning of virtual communities, a topic that has received limited attention in previous research. It examines the new types of communities emerging in the digital environment, the use of shared information, and the transformations that social relationships undergo in the virtual sphere. In this context, the study explores how Reddit communities share information through their posts.