Government Joins Reddit In Bid To Step Up Its Online Communications Strategy

Reddit has overtaken X to become the UK's fifth most popular social platform (Alamy)

3 min read01 April

The government has set up a Reddit account as part of its effort to use more modern forms of media to get cut through.

The new Reddit account ‘UKGovNews’ is the latest in a raft of changes implemented by the government’s new communications operation, which includes the New Media Unit created by No10 in November.

The unit, known internally as NMU, is responsible for the Reddit account and also set up a UK government TikTok account in the autumn.

According to The Times, an internal government review last year found that around 70 per cent of government content was still posted on Elon Musk’s X – formerly Twitter – despite the British public using a much wider range of online sources to get their news and information.

There were signs of this behaviour in the run-up to last year’s general election, when Reform UK did particularly well reaching young people on TikTok.

There is a belief among senior government figures that people’s news consumption is moving away from traditional forms like newspaper front pages and live TV bulletins, and towards social and online types of media, PoliticsHome understands. This strategy was communicated to special advisers at a recent away day. According to Ofcom research in November, Reddit has overtaken X to become the UK's fifth most popular social platform.

The government confirmed that it had created the account, with a spokesperson telling PoliticsHome: "We are committed to rebuilding trust and ensuring we reach a range of audiences as we deliver on our Plan for Change, which is why we are continuing to modernise our communications so that they better reflect how the public consumes information."

Reddit is a social media forum where users can read, post and comment on various subjects through user-created boards called "subreddits". Users are generally anonymous, with automatically generated usernames and cartoon-like icons.

The government’s first Reddit post was 15 days ago on the ‘small business’ subreddit page, sharing a City AM article reporting that Chancellor Rachel Reeves had invited regulators to Downing Street as part of a plan to “slash red tape” for small businesses. Users in the comments below the post did not appear to realise it was made by an official government account.

In the weeks since, the government has posted announcements to subreddit channels relating to the Royal Navy, cars and driving, jobs and travel. It also made posts to regional subreddits including York, Manchester, Leeds, Huddersfield and Liverpool to announce £415m of funding to improve struggling rail services in these areas.

In one post on the UK politics subreddit, the government announced it had returned more than 24,000 individuals with no right to be in the UK since the July general election. The post had received more than 1,600 ‘upvotes’ and 299 comments at the time of writing.

Underneath the post, one Reddit user commented: “Good to know the government is terminally online too.”

Additional reporting by Adam Payne.