Reddit Submissions of Opioid Related Content in Philadelphia Oriented Subreddits

Reddit is one of the largest social media websites in the world and it contains valuable data about its users and their perspectives organized into virtual communities or subreddits, based on common areas of interest. Substance use issues are particularly salient within this online community due to the burgeoning substance use (opioid) crisis within the United States among other countries. A particularly important location for understanding user perceptions of opioids is the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA region, due to the prevalence associated with overdose deaths. To collect user sentiment on opioid use within this region, the researchers have targeted subreddits related to Philadelphia. By referencing a predefined keyword list relating to opioids (included in the dataset), the researchers iterated through each subreddit and found all instances of the keywords. The dataset comprises submissions and comments that include the keywords. The data were collected directly from the Reddit API via the praw library in the Python programming language.