The present experiment investigated if and how other readers’ reactions to news on Internet portal sites affect individuals’ perceptions of public opinion, assessments of media influence, and their personal opinion. In so doing, others’ responses were shown as either individual comments or aggregate approval ratings of the article, and the individual’s need for cognition (NFC) was considered as a potential moderator of their relative effects. High NFC individuals relied more on the approval ratings than individual postings in estimating media influence on general public, but low NFC individuals’ presumption about media influence remained unaltered, regardless of how others’ reactions were presented. However, exposure to dissenting comments led both high and low NFC individuals to perceive the public opinion as more discrepant from the news position, with no corresponding effect for approval ratings. Others’ comments significantly affected participants’ personal opinion, but only for those less prone to engage in analytical thinking.

Two experiments investigated when and how user comments on news websites affect individuals' personal opinion. In Study 1 (N ¼ 596), opinion-reinforcing (vs. opinion-challenging) user comments led participants to perceive both (a) public opinion and (b) the news tone to be more congenial to their own position, which induced opinion polarization. When user comments were presented within the news article as direct quotes, however, their influence on perceived public opinion was attenuated, with no corresponding change for perceived news position. Poorer message recall partly accounted for the reduced influence of quoted (vs. as-is) comments, but perceived manipulability did not. In Study 2 (N ¼ 261), those with higher need for cognition (NFC) were more likely to infer public opinion from the user comments in their original form than those quoted in the news, but the opposite was true for low NFCs. Results suggest that neither priming nor consensus heuristic fully explain the effects of user comments on personal opinion.

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