Exploring Linguistic Markers of Persuasion in r/ChangeMyView Fact-Checking Threads: A Feature-Based Study of Opinion Change

Abstract

Digital platforms increasingly mediate user attention, engagement, and content credibility, making the mechanisms of persuasion a central concern for digital business strategy. In this context, understanding which rhetorical, emotional, and social markers drive apparent opinion change—and whether fact-checking cues moderate these effects—becomes critical for designing trustworthy and effective online experiences. This study examines how rhetorical, emotional, and social cues shape belief changes on Reddit’s r/ChangeMyView (CMV), a forum where users challenge others to convince them to reconsider their views. Persuasive success is measured by Δ (delta) awards—tokens granted by the original poster to comments they judge to have meaningfully shifted their perspective. This feature-based approach allows the research to test whether markers like citations, hedging, or emotional tone influence belief change, and whether fact-checking cues moderate the relationship between social and rhetorical signals and persuasive outcomes. Results surprisingly show that persuasive (delta-awarded) Reddit comments generally use fewer explicit fact-checking cues, such as credible links or numerical references, than their non-persuasive counterparts, despite common assumptions that more evidence increases persuasive power. Instead, successful persuasive comments tend to have slightly higher emotional resonance (pathos) scores, favor concise rhetorical structure, and integrate selective evidence into a coherent, accessible argument. This research lays the groundwork for understanding online persuasion as a context-dependent, socially mediated process, showing that persuasive success emerges from the strategic combination of rhetorical form, emotional engagement, and community-recognized credibility, rather than from sheer informational density alone.