Academic literature on the topic 'Online news commenting'

Abstract Social plugins for sharing news through Facebook and Twitter have become increasingly salient features on news sites. Together with the user comment feature, social plugins are the most common way for users to contribute. The wide use of multiple features has opened new areas to comprehensively study users’ participatory practices. However, how do these opportunities to participate vary between the participatory spaces that news sites affiliated with local, national broadsheet and tabloid news constitute? How are these opportunities appropriated by users in terms of participatory practices such as commenting and sharing news through Facebook and Twitter? In addition, what differences are there between news sites in these respects? To answer these questions, a quantitative content analysis has been conducted on 3,444 articles from nine Swedish online newspapers. Local newspapers are more likely to allow users to comment on articles than are national newspapers. Tweeting news is appropriated only on news sites affiliated with evening tabloids and national morning newspapers. Sharing news through Facebook is 20 times more common than tweeting news or commenting. The majority of news items do not attract any user interaction.

While most of the online participation research assumes the Western notion of fulfilling deliberative practices, online contexts have been also found to be an active battleground for so-called information warfare. To test the potential for online comments being used by cross-national political opponents, we analyze the case of online comments on the most active Lithuanian online news portal’s Russian-language edition. This news portal presents itself as a unique case, since Russia was found to engage in a support or mobilization of the compatriot community in the Baltic States by exercising “soft influence.”To analyze such “soft influence” our study proposed a framework called Commenting User Typology (CUT). The CUT combines three types of data points: a) content level (topic of the story category), b) user level (frequency of posting), and c) the timing and location of the posting to contribute to studies of online social influence. We have applied the CUT framework to the commenting practices of 4,940 users who produced 34,038 comments over a month. In the analysis, we found that the majority of the users’ posts were low in topic variety and infrequent; followed by low in variety and frequent; high in topic variety and frequent; and high in topic variety and infrequent in posting. Moreover, while around a half of the comments come from Lithuania, 16% from Russia, yet more than 7% were found to mask IP addresses. Also, the results of this study suggest that more active participants tend to participate in more topic areas and that posting occurs faster in more active topic areas. The implications of this study relate to online news portals overall as well as online news portals in the non-Western contexts or electoral totalitarian regimes as Russia. We argue that user-based analysis, such as the CUT-based approach we proposed, can be particularly relevant for contexts where deliberative practices are still in negotiation.

Swearing, the use of taboo languages tagged with a high level of emotional arousal, has become commonplace in contemporary political culture. The current study attempts to understand the ways in which swearing influences citizen-to-citizen news commenting online. Based on a large corpus of the 2-month user comments from 26 news websites in South Korea, the study examines swearing effects as well as its interplay with anonymity on garnering public attention and shaping other users’ perceptions of the comments. Findings suggest that swearing generally has a positive effect on increasing user attention to comments as well as gaining other users’ approvals. Comparisons between political and nonpolitical topics further suggest that swearing effect on gaining public attention is particularly prominent for political discussions. In contrast, the magnitude of change toward positive valence in public perception to comments is much greater for nonpolitical topics than for politics. From the findings, we conclude that an acceptable degree of swearing norms in online discussions vary across news topical arenas. The results also lead to discussions about the possibility of like-minded exposure to political comments as a default condition for online discussions. Finally, the study highlights the role of high-arousal emotions in shaping discursive participation in contemporary networked sociodigital environment.

Commenting on the news is one of the most common forms of participation in news use and one of the most prevalent forms of citizen engagement online. However, very little research has focused on the characteristics of those who contribute to news websites and how this influences their commenting behaviour. Drawing on the Big Five Inventory of personality traits, this exploratory study examines how personality impacts upon the frequency of commenting and motivations for commenting on news websites. Overall, we find that less agreeable and more open to new experiences individuals commented more. Those individuals who demonstrate high levels of neuroticism were more likely to comment on stories which impacted them emotionally. Those who were disagreeable were more likely to comment on a story when they disagreed with the journalist. Those with lower levels of conscientiousness were more likely to comment if they disagreed with other commenters. Finally, disorganised and disagreeable individuals were more likely to comment to see the reaction of other commenters.

The authors raise questions about the effects of reader comments on online news credibility, and among their findings is that the same feature—readers’ comments—that makes online news more appealing also decreases the credibility of the news outlet. The commenting system and the way comments are moderated do not appear to affect a news outlet’s credibility.

Weight stigma results from the mediatisation of ‘obesity’: conceptually, a medicalised problem resulting from personal bodily irresponsibility. We undertake a frame analysis of 1452 comments on a thematically related online news article published via The Guardian, about the status of ‘obesity’ as a disability in European Union (EU) employment law. We identify three themes: (1) weight as a lifestyle choice or disability, (2) weight as an irresponsible choice and (3) weight as a simple or complex issue. We contend that the design of the commenting platform prevents counter-narratives from challenging the dominant (‘obesity’) framing for three reasons: (1) content is driven by comments appearing earlier in the corpus, (2) the commenting system primarily supports argument between polarised rhetorical positions and (3) the platform design discourages users from developing alternative terminologies for producing counter-narratives. In this way, we explore how weight stigma is propagated through online media, and how users’ comments intersect with the affordances of the platform itself.

Online audience engagement, such as rating or sharing news, commenting or creating content, can enhance users’ loyalty toward online news brands. Yet recently, uncertainties have been discussed within journalism research and practice concerning the handling of online comment sections and potential negative influences – caused through comment reading – on news brands. From a brand management perspective, audience engagement and comment reading can affect a brand’s equity. This study investigates the value of audience engagement and comment reading for the customer-based brand equity of online news outlets. An online survey with n = 313 users of the digital native cohort revealed that comment reading is neither directly beneficial nor harmful for online news brands. However, for brands providing hard news comment reading seems more likely to have negative than positive relations with CBBE than for brands with other content. Sharing and liking news are associated with a stronger perceived brand quality, loyalty, and associations. User-generated content creation including commenting does not enhance customer-based brand equity. Overall, serious content proved to be a stronger driver of news brand value than any form of audience engagement.

The current paper investigates reader commenting on news sites as one facet of journalism 2.0. Specifically, the themes, frequency, and regional coverage of readers’ comments—and in general, their activity levels and distribution—are considered, with a goal to increase knowledge of convergent media and computer-mediated communication (CMC), as well as shed light on the interactivity strategies adopted by influential news producers. The corpus is collected from the Arabic news site of the controversial Middle East-based, bilingual network Al Jazeera. Reader commenting was found to be a regular occurrence on the site but distributed unevenly across stories. The stories focused mostly on themes related to military and political violence, politics, and foreign relations, and covered events related to the Arab world more than other regions. Also, patterns of commenting varied according to day of the week and position of the story on the web page. Overall, these findings suggest that citizen journalism—journalism is performed by lay persons—on Al Jazeera tends to be shaped by the coverage and layout of the news site. Moreover, citizen participation in online news sites such as Al Jazeera is still far from ideal, in that commenters are given neither the access nor the facilitation to use modalities other than written text. These limitations are critiqued in light of contemporary discourses about media convergence and journalism 2.0.

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.

In today's media landscape, the boundaries between traditional media and digital media are intertwined. Thus, many news outlets can use social media platforms such as Facebook to share their articles to reach a larger audience. At the same time, it creates an opportunity for readers to interact with the articles by leaving a comment.  The purpose of this study is to examine what Facebook users comment on posts that contain links to news articles about influences in relation to COVID-19. The selected news articles are published on BBC News and The Guardian Facebook pages. Our research question is: What do Facebook users comment on posts about influencers in relation to COVID-19? Besides, we have two subquestions to support the research question; (1) What are the similarities and differences in the responses when comparing the comments on posts from 2020 and 2021? (2) What are users' opinions about influencers in relation to COVID-19? To support the questions, we use the theories public sphere and discourse theory.  Regarding the method, the study is carried out with a qualitative approach, which means that we examined four Facebook posts, of which 50 comments from each post by using discourse analysis. The choice of posts is based on the articles in the posts being about influencers in connection with COVID-19. Then the material was processed in the program NVivo, where we could identify the most used words among the comments.  The results show that the themes that can be identified in the posts are influencers as a profession, influencers' ethical behaviour and society. Then we analyse the themes, some of the most used words and writing styles in different contexts. For example, many commentators argue that being an influencer is not a real job, and thus it is absurd that influencers are allowed to travel abroad even though the restrictions imply that UK residents can only travel abroad for work. In line with this, many also criticise restrictions as they apply only to a specific group, which influencers do not fall into the category. Other aspects that can be founded are that influencers can do whatever they want, and they are skilled at marketing.  We concluded in the study that the pictures and headlines serve as a basis for how the commentators can view influencers. Moreover, public opinion may differ depending on the knowledge of people regarding COVID-19. We can also indicate that Facebook users tend to leave comments with descriptive and convincing writing styles rather than explanatory.

This thesis examined the reader comments of an online article that concerns human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination. The article has been published in the online version of the New York Times with the headline “HPV Vaccine Is Credited in Fall of Teenagers’ Infection Rate”, on June 19th 2013. Vaccines cause discussion. HPV vaccination is a controversial topic among the commenters, because the vaccine is given to children and adolescent, and HPV is transmitted through sexual contact. I analysed the linguistic features of the reader comments to see what types of discourses it created. I singled out the comments which were typical or expressive concerning the discussed discourse. I also wanted to represent the relations between commenters. In addition, I discuss commenting to a news article as a means of community building, however, the analysis foregrounds the discourses. The theoretical foundation of this thesis is largely based on the works of Norman Fairclough (2003, 2010) and his view of critical discourse analysis (CDA), and the comments are analysed using CDA as a foundation. The ways in which vaccines are described and discussed in public have an impact on private decision-making. Understanding the discourses that people use when discussing vaccines is therefore important in order to wider understand vaccine conversation. I wanted to see what types of arguments and justifications the commenters have for either accepting or not accepting the HPV vaccine. The research question of the thesis was: What discourses the comments of HPV vaccination related piece of news create. From the reader comments, three main discourses were found: The ideal parent, societal discourse and medical discourse. Parental discourse focuses on parenting decisions, skills and the battle of what makes a good parent. Societal discourse is activated in the effect vaccination has on a society, the reasons behind vaccination decisions and distrust or trust of pharmaceutical companies. I also included the stance commenters have on the article to societal discourse. Medical discourse focuses on the way commenters use medical lexicon and somehow show their medical knowledge. They use medical talk to justify their opinions and make their comments sound more believable. Other discourses could have been found as well, however, these were the most striking to me. The commenters of the studied article can roughly be divided in two groups; those who support the vaccine and those who do not. The groups question the comments of each other and defend commenters with similar viewpoints. Shared values create a sense of community. In the case of commenting, people form a community for a definite period of time; either the commenting space closes or the frequency of commenting decreases. The main themes in the online comments of the studied article were consistent with earlier vaccination discussion (Lei et al. 2015; Feinberg et al. 2015), which suggest that online comments can provide a reliable source on attitudes and perceptions of health issues. HPV vaccination causes discussion among parents, and vaccination is socially important; it has an effect on everyone. Researching online comments could help health officials provide the type of information the parents are looking for and try to undo the myths concerning vaccination
Tämä tutkimus tarkastelee nettiartikkelin lukijakommentteja. Artikkeli käsittelee ihmisen papilloomavirusrokotetta, eli HPV-rokotetta. Tutkimuksessa käytetty artikkeli on julkaistu The New York Times:in Internetsivuilla. Artikkeli on julkastu 13. kesäkuuta 2013, otsikkonaan “HPV Vaccine Is Credited in Fall of Teenagers’ Infection Rate”. Artikkeli käsittelee HP-virustartuntojen vähenemistä teini-ikäisillä rokotusten aloittamisen myötä. Rokotukset herättävät keskustelua lukijakommentoijien keskuudessa. HPV-rokote on erityisen kiistanalainen siksi, koska se annetaan lapsille ja murrosikäisille ja HPV tarttuu seksuaalisessa kontaktissa. Tutkimuksessa pyrin selvittämään, millaisia diskursseja lukijakommentit loivat. Rokotekeskustelu vaikuttaa ihmisten yksityiseen päätöksentekoon. Rokotekeskustelun diskurssien ymmärtäminen on täten tärkeää myös laajemman ymmärryksen kannalta. Halusin nähdä millaisia argumentaatioita ja perusteluja kommentoijilla on rokottamisen puolesta tai rokottamista vastaan. Tutkimuskysymykseni oli: Millaisia diskursseja HPV-rokotteen kommentointi luo? Analysoin kommentteja, jotka olivat tyypillisä tai kuvaavia löydettyä diskurssia ajatellen. Halusin myös tuoda esiin kommentoijien välistä suhdetta. Lisäksi otin kantaa siihen, voiko kommentoijien ajatella muodostavan yhteisön. Tutkimuskohdettani lähestyin kriittisen diskurssianalyysin avulla (Fairclough, 2003, 2010). Lukijakommenteista löysin kolme päädiskurssia eli näkökulmaa: Ideaalinen vanhempi, yhteiskunnallinen diskurssi ja lääketieteellinen diskurssi. Ideaalinen vanhempi-diskurssi keskittyy kasvatusvalintoihin- ja kykyihin sekä taisteluun siitä, mikä tekee hyvän vanhemman. Yhteiskunnallinen diskurssi keskittyy rokottamisen yhteiskunnalliseen vaikutukseen, syihin rokotuspäätösten takana, lääkeyhtiöiden luotettavuteen ja kommentoijien kantaan artikkelia kohtaan. Lääketieteellisessä diskurssissa kommentoijat käyttävät lääketieteellistä sanastoa ja osoittavat jollain tavalla lääketieteellisen tietämyksensä. He käyttävät lääketieteellistä puhetapaa mielipiteidensä perustelemiseen ja kommenttien uskottavuutta vahvistamaan. Muitakin diskursseja olisi ollut mahdollista löytää, nämä kuitenkin olivat itselleni silmiinpistävimmät. Artikkelin lukijakommentoijat voitiin jakaa karkeasti kahteen ryhmään: Rokotevastustajiin ja rokotteen puoltajiin. Ryhmät kommentoivat toistensa kommentteja ja puolustivat yhteneväisiä näkökantoja oman ryhmänsä sisällä. Yhteiset arvot luovat yhteisöllisyyden tunnetta. Lukijakommenttien tapauksessa yhteisö muodostuu yleensä määräajaksi. Joko kommenttiketju suljetaan tai ajan kuluessa kommentointitiheys harvenee. Rokottaminen on yhteiskunnallisesti tärkeää ja se vaikuttaa jokaiseen. Lukijakommenttien tutkiminen voisi auttaa terveydenhuollon ammattilaisia välittämään sellaista tietoa, jota vanhemmat etsivät, kumoten näin rokottamiseen liittyviä myyttejä

This chapter focuses on the issues at stake in digital scholarly edition, commenting on the main challenges and opportunities that the use of digital technology, computers, and dynamic schemas in online publication of critical editions entails. It emphasizes how the new digital environment can modify and perhaps extend textual criticism's scope and reach. Particular attention is given to societal, epistemological, and cultural factors that can influence the evolution of the discipline; to the rapid change and transformation rhythm; to the inherent instability of new digital environments; and finally, to the multiplicity of the varied representational frameworks that can compete within a digital structure.

This chapter examines one of the most popular youth open platform and video site in China, Bilibili, in which instant, bullet-commenting technology is built in to enhance the participation of the online users. Facilitated by this specific interactive technology, the new form of online commenting system embedded on Bilibili allows members to post and share videos—from self-created ones to illegal Japanese animation—and to engage other participants on an equal basis. As a subcultural space, Bilibili enables youth to organize their own community. In addition, it provides the technological infrastructure for the youths to play with certain form of public discussions. In careful examination of youth cultural practice and its wrestling with commercial force particularly, this study argues that the carnivalesque in a subcultural territory, though a de-politicalized public space, embrace potentials of cultural and political resistance toward capitals and dominant power by ways of poaching and transcoding them into their own subcultural context through online chatting and comments.

This chapter examines the online identities of protestors and their transnational audiences that emerged across social media platforms during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Using the framework of assemblage theory, the authors argue that these online identities emerged as a result of the assemblages of dissent that formed between protestors and their audiences. In particular, they argue that, as protestors and their transnational audiences came together in assemblages of dissent, both gained emergent online identities as activists in the transnational mediatized event of the revolution. Protestors initiated these relationships through petitions for audiences to join the Facebook page “We are All Khaled Said” and follow the Twitter hashtag #Jan25; their catalogue of grievances against Mubarak’s regime; and, finally, their digital assertions of lived experiences of violence. As transnational audiences took up these texts as invitations to participate in the doing of this mediatized event, they responded by “liking,” commenting, retweeting, and creating new texts of their own. As a result, both protestors and their audiences around the globe gained online identities as activists in the revolution.