News comment sections and online echo chambers: The ideological alignment between partisan news stories and their user comments

Abstract

This study explored the presence of digital echo chambers in the realm of partisan media’s news comment sections in South Korea. We analyzed the political slant of 152 K user comments written by 76 K unique contributors on NAVER, the country’s most popular news aggregator. We found that the political slant of the average user comments to be in alignment with the political leaning of the conservative news outlets; however, this was not true of the progressive media. A considerable number of comment contributors made a crossover from like-minded to cross-cutting partisan media and argued with their political opponents. The majority of these crossover commenters were “headstrong ideologues,” followed by “flip-floppers” and “opponents.” The implications of the present study are discussed in light of the potential for the news comment sections to be the digital cafés of Public Sphere 2.0 rather than echo chambers.

Online Audiences and Gatekeeping: User Comments and Their Infulence on Editorial Processes in Newsrooms in Kenya

“…It means; thus, 252 questionnaires were shared with the study participants. Ninety-six (96) of the questionnaires were returned [(15) were from RAG, NMG (30), and (51) from SG]. This formed a response rate of 38.1% of the survey.…”

“…These include websites and social media platforms. Additionally, the comment sections in news websites and social media platforms provide real-time interactive opportunities for participatory journalism (Han et al, 2022). Indeed, studies in South Korea, Australia, Germany and North America indicate that over 70% of digital news consumers read the comment sections.…”

“…They are seen as valid cues of public opinion and generate further user engagement. However, significantly, the nature of comments can potentially influence other readers' sense of media objectivity and credibility, news quality and may activate prejudices and stereotypes toward the subjects featured in the news (Han et al, 2022; Korea Press Foundation, 2018; Barnes, 2015;Springer et al, 2015& Stroud et al, 2016. The comment sections have also emerged as virtual objects in digital journalism, whereby they are used as data sources for gathering further information, quality improvement and evaluation, and innovation and development of new technologies.…”

Does Social Media Users’ Interaction Influence the Formation of Echo Chambers? Social Network Analysis Based on Vaccine Video Comments on YouTube

“…The research on misinformation diffusion paid more attention to the structure [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ], influencing factors [ 8 , 9 , 10 ], the negative effect [ 11 , 12 , 13 ], and the misinformation rebuttal [ 14 , 15 , 16 ], etc. The research on TECE was detailed on political communication [ 17 , 18 , 19 ] and environmental protection [ 20 , 21 ], etc., which aimed to analyze the existence of echo chambers [ 22 , 23 ], the effect of the recommendation algorithm, and the influence of user cognition on echo chamber, etc. [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ].…”