Effects of Civility and Reasoning in User Comments on Perceived Journalistic Quality

Prochazka, Fabian; Weber, Patrick; Schweiger, Wolfgang

doi:10.1080/1461670x.2016.1161497

Cited by 147 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Incivility in news comment sections can lead to troubling consequences, such as prompting polarized attitudes about science (Anderson, Brossard, Scheufele, Xenos, & Ladwig, ) and toward political parties (Hwang, Kim, & Huh, ). It is also related to avoiding comment sections and online discussion (Diakopoulos & Naaman, ; Springer, Engelmann, & Pfaffinger, ) and perceiving articles as lower‐quality (Prochazka, Weber, & Schweiger, in press). Some news organizations (e.g., Reuters and National Public Radio, NPR) have shut down their comment sections because of such concerns.…”

Section: Professional Norms and Journalists' Reactions To Uncivil Commentioning

confidence: 99%

News Values, Cognitive Biases, and Partisan Incivility in Comment Sections

2017

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Partisan incivility is prevalent in news comments, but we have limited insight into how journalists and news users engage with it. Gatekeeping, cognitive bias, and social identity theories suggest that journalists may tolerate incivility while users actively promote partisan incivility. Using 9.6 million comments from The New York Times, we analyze whether the presence of uncivil and partisan terms affects how journalists and news users engage with comments. Results show that partisanship and incivility increase recommendations and the likelihood of receiving an abuse flag. Swearing increases the likelihood of a comment being rejected and reduces the chances of being highlighted as a NYT Pick. These findings suggest that journalists and news users interact with partisan incivility differently, and that some forms of incivility may be promoted or tacitly accepted in comments.

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Section: Professional Norms and Journalists' Reactions To Uncivil Commentioning

confidence: 99%

News Values, Cognitive Biases, and Partisan Incivility in Comment Sections

2017

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“…Third, audience feedback alters readers' evaluation of a news story's quality. Exposure to low‐quality user comments devoid of evidence and reasoning (vs. no comments) leads news readers to evaluate the information quality of the news from unknown outlets more negatively, and uncivil comments lower the perceived formal quality of the news story (Prochazka, Weber, & Schweiger, ). Such results replicate the earlier finding that news users rate the news article more negatively when associated user comments contain vulgar language and personal attacks (Kim & Sun, ).…”

Section: Audience Feedback and News Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When News Meets the Audience: How Audience Feedback Online Affects News Production and Consumption

2017

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Innovations in communication technology have changed the way news is produced and consumed. Various digital platforms, ranging from news websites to social media sites to personal blogs, have enabled news users to indicate how much they like the news they have read, to share it with others, and to leave comments. News users' mouse clicks are automatically recorded and aggregated by computational systems and made publicly visible (e.g., “Most Read Articles”). This essay reviews the ever‐growing research on how audience feedback online, a hybrid form of interpersonal and mass communication, alters various stages of news production and influences the way people select, process, and make sense of the news. Future research agendas are proposed.

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“…Sharing news in social networking sites or being exposed to articles shared by friends in SNS also enhances exposure to discussion with heterogeneous others in social networks (Choi & Lee, 2015). At the aggregate level, studies focusing on the effects of reading comments on news stories show that the presence of comments underneath a news story can alter the participants' perception about what the public thinks about the issue (Lee, 2012) or to decrease the perceived quality of a news article (Prochazka, Weber, & Schweiger, 2016).…”

Section: A Closer Look At the Concept Of Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Shares and Comments on News?: A Cross-National Comparative Analysis of Online and Social Media Participation

Kalogeropoulos¹,

Negredo

Picone³

et al. 2017

Social Media + Society

122

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In this article, we present a cross-national comparative analysis of which online news users in practice engage with the participatory potential for sharing and commenting on news afforded by interactive features in news websites and social media technologies across a strategic sample of six different countries. Based on data from the 2016 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, and controlling for a range of factors, we find that (1) people who use social media for news and a high number of different social media platforms are more likely to also engage more actively with news outside social media by commenting on news sites and sharing news via email, (2) political partisans on both sides are more likely to engage in sharing and commenting particularly on news stories in social media, and (3) people with high interest in hard news are more likely to comment on news on both news sites and social media and share stores via social media (and people with high interest in any kind of news [hard or soft] are more likely to share stories via email). Our analysis suggests that the online environment reinforces some long-standing inequalities in participation while countering other long-standing inequalities. The findings indicate a self-reinforcing positive spiral where the already motivated are more likely in practice to engage with the potential for participation offered by digital media, and a negative spiral where those who are less engaged participate less.

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Effects of Civility and Reasoning in User Comments on Perceived Journalistic Quality

Cited by 147 publications

References 41 publications

News Values, Cognitive Biases, and Partisan Incivility in Comment Sections

News Values, Cognitive Biases, and Partisan Incivility in Comment Sections

When News Meets the Audience: How Audience Feedback Online Affects News Production and Consumption

Who Shares and Comments on News?: A Cross-National Comparative Analysis of Online and Social Media Participation

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