What Creates Interactivity in Online News Discussions? An Exploratory Analysis of Discussion Factors in User Comments on News Items

Abstract

While the social, political, and journalistic relevance of user comments on online news items has been discussed intensively, no study has tried to examine why some online news discussions are more interactive than others. Based on the rationale of news value theory, this study argues that so-called discussion factors in user comments indicate general relevance to later users to respond to them. Qualitative interviews with users who comment on news stories online and a quantitative content analysis of 1,580 user comments showed that the discussion factors uncertainty, controversy, comprehensibility, negativity, and personalization can explain interactivity in news discussions. Further, different technological implementations of the comment function seem to have a limited influence on the effects of these discussion factors.

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

“…Some studies lump swearing and other types of incivility together, but others have distinguished between various types of incivility (e.g., Coe et al, 2014). Although not identical to our two concepts, Ziegele et al (2014) separated aggression (swearing and flaming directed to other discussants) from controversy (incivility and trolling related to the topic). We separate swearing and other incivility types for the theoretical reasons described below.…”

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

“…Some message features, such as story frames (episodic vs. thematic; gain vs. loss) (Holton, Lee, & Coleman, 2014) and the topic and the sources quoted (Coe, Kenski, & Rains, 2014), alter the volume and the content of user comments. User comments that contain uncertainty, controversy, negativity, and personalization are also more likely to beget responses from other users (Ziegele, Breiner, & Quiring, 2014). However, it remains relatively unknown what motivates people to initiate and engage in online commenting and news sharing.…”

The Imagined Audience for and Perceived Quality of News Comments: Exploring the Perceptions of Commenters on News Sites and on Facebook

“…Because of the growing popularity of leaving and reading comments online, these spaces for public discourse have become an important topic for communication research. Scholars have examined news comment sections to understand the impact of interactivity and other content features (Weber, 2014;Ziegele, Breiner, & Quiring, 2014), the quality of news comments (Coe et al, 2014;Rowe, 2015aRowe, , 2015bSantana, 2014), motivations for commenting (Springer, Engelmann, & Pfaffinger, 2015;Stroud et al, 2016), personal characteristics of news commenters (Wu & Atkin, 2017), and the influence of news comments on users' evaluation of news articles and social issues (Anderson, Brossard, Scheufele, Xenos, & Ladwig, 2014;Prochazka et al, 2016) and their future commenting behaviors (Rösner & Krämer, 2016). In addition, from the perspective of journalists, there have been a number of studies of how reporters and editors react to and negotiate the value of news comments (e.g., Loke, 2012;Nielsen, 2014;Robinson, 2010).…”