‘Friends call me racist’: Experiences of repercussions from writing comments on newspaper websites

Abstract

Based on a survey among contributors to the online comments sections of four Norwegian newspapers, we investigate the following research question: How do contributors describe their experiences of repercussions from writing comments on newspaper websites? Employing quantitative and qualitative analyses, we explore the influence of four variables: Gender, anonymity, attitudes towards editorial policies and issue controversy. We find no influence from gender. However, regarding attitudes we find that the experience of repercussions is particularly prevalent amongst those who oppose strict editorial control with regards to reader comments, as well as among respondents who write comments on a radical right-wing website. Studying free-form answers which describe incidents of repercussions experienced by the respondents we find no sign of gender differences, but rather a strong dominance of statements related to issue controversies, and particularly regarding immigration and Islam.

Managing unpleasant moods: Affective discipline in Facebook discussions

“…Based on the analysis elaborated below, I suggest that one of these dynamics can be affective discipline, where participants of a discussion take action against other participants' behaviour in ways that intervene in the mood of the discussion and direct its attunement (cf. Langlois et al, 2009;Løvlie et al, 2018;Tong, 2017: 412, 414).…”

“…As Ziegele et al (2017) and Løvlie et al (2018) note, news containing news values, such as controversy and damage appear to encourage active online commenting, even though the covered events are not in an area of cultural or geographical proximity to the commenters (see also Larsson, 2018b). In other words, controversial or disruptive topics appear to have more affective stickiness (Ahmed, 2004) that can carry on over time, and they therefore invite and sustain more attention and engagement (Paasonen, 2015) than other topics.…”

Handling with online comments: a longitudinal approach in most accessed news sites in Portugal, Spain and Brazil

“…Scientific research has empirically demonstrate it (Coe, Kenski & Rains, 2014). Løvlie, Ihlebaek and Larsson (2018) stated the experience of commenting is particularly meaningful for those whom oppose to a specific media outlet. Santana (2015) concluded that negative discourses in these spaces tend to increase towards immigration issues, based on a survey at sites of three online newspapers in Border States.…”

Hostile emotions: An exploratory study of far-right online commenters and their emotional connection to traditional and alternative news media

“…The news media can in other words be an arena for inclusion and solidarity based on mediated emotional connections, but they can also represent a space of conflict and exclusion (Orgeret, 2020). One of the ways in which audiences can respond to journalism is by participating in comment sections (Ihlebæk and Krumsvik, 2015; Løvlie et al, 2018a; Lünenborg and Maier, 2018; Toepfl and Piwoni, 2015). Several studies have indicated how such spaces have become arenas for incivility and hate (Coe et al, 2014; Erjavec and Kovacic, 2012; Quandt, 2018; Su et al, 2018; Waldron, 2012), how participation can be triggered by anger (Springer et al, 2015; Wollebæk et al, 2019; Ziegele et al, 2017) and how journalists have responded to this kind of audience participation (Canter, 2013; Frischlich et al, 2019; Lewis, 2012; Singer et al, 2011; Bergstrom and Wadbring, 2015).…”