Scandal 2.0

Abstract

Previous research shows that one-sided and uncivil reader comments posted below professionally edited online news articles may affect a recipient’s perception of the specific issue at hand. However, it remains largely unclear whether specific comments affect a reader’s perception of an individual actor depicted in an online news article. An online experiment showed substantial effects (e.g., attitudes, perceived responsibility, perceived opinion climate) of valenced reader comments on a recipient’s evaluation of a scandalized financial manager depicted in connection with a mediated financial scandal. Furthermore, recipients’ perceived journalistic quality of the article itself was affected by specific reader comments.

How Web Comments Affect Perceptions of Political Interviews and Journalistic Control

“…Based on attribution theory, people can ascribe a politician's answers to internal forces caused by the politician's disposition or to external forces caused by the media situation. Although this extension of attribution theory to comment sections may have been suggested by previous experimentation (e.g., Von Sikorski & Hänelt's [2016] attributions of a news scandal), the present article offers the first test of comments affecting people's attributions between a politician and a journalist. This article also presents the first test of the role that external control plays in attributions of a politician's evasiveness.…”

“…Attribution theory's emphasis on internal versus external causality has been extended to perceptions of online comment sections affecting perceptions of media reporting (e.g., Von Sikorski & Hänelt, 2016), but it has yet to be extended to news interviews, in which audience members make attributions. Prior research of comment sections has also drawn upon framing theory (e.g., Clark, Bland, & Livingston, 2017;Douai & Nofal, 2012); however, the present article is the first research to report experiments testing framing effects with comment sections.…”

“…Most online news consumers read user-generated comments (Diakopoulos & Naaman, 2011). Comment sections allow people to make attributions (Von Sikorski & Hänelt, 2016). Viewers can construct their own interpretations below web news videos (Clark et al, 2017), and comments frequently challenge the journalist's perspective (Graham & Wright, 2015).…”

“…People misattributed hostility to the news report if comments suggested bias-even when a news report was balanced and unbiased. Von Sikorski and Hänelt (2016) examined the effects of comment sections and attribution of responsibility in a scandal. People's attributions and their perceived journalistic quality of the article were in line with comment section exposure.…”

“…Their results suggested that one-sided comments impact perceptions of a media report, while a mixed comment section acts similarly to a control condition sans comments. Von Sikorski and Hänelt (2016) also included a condition with mixed comments and reported that the control condition and mixed-valence condition operated similarly.…”