Online Readers' Comments Represent New Opinion Pipeline

Santana, Arthur D.

doi:10.1177/073953291103200306

Cited by 103 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Reader (2012) found some high-profile US columnists and commenters strongly disagree about the value of anonymous comments, the latter claiming some readers need anonymity to keep from being fired for what they say. Santana (2011), on the other hand, found reporters tolerate forums for occasional insights, while Nielsen (2012) found many journalists do not read comments or interact with commenters. Perhaps not surprisingly, commenters themselves report disliking the rude nature of some forums (Rosenberry 2011).…”

Section: Previous Commenting Researchmentioning

confidence: 96%

Online Story Commenting

Marchionni¹

2014

Journalism Practice

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Story comments offer a form of citizen engagement on news sites potentially important to democratic discourse. Yet few issues vex newsrooms more because of abusive rants, often from unnamed sources. This controlled experiment set out to test the "conversationalness" of commenting, using newly identified variables that theoretically measure the concept of journalism as a conversation. The study also tested whether commenting might help with reader trust. The data show that commenting's best indicators of conversation are perceived friendliness and social presence. But comments do not appear to help with journalism's most important values of perceived credibility and expertise.

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Section: Previous Commenting Researchmentioning

confidence: 96%

Online Story Commenting

Marchionni¹

2014

Journalism Practice

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“…A burgeoning amount of research examines the role of newspaper forums in terms of the importance of audience participation and user-generated content (Singer & Ashman, 2009), anonymity (Rosenberry, 2011), gatekeeping (McElroy, 2013, and even how journalists think about and use online reader comments (Santana, 2011). Research indicates that journalists are struggling with how best to deal with such objectionable, anonymous reader comments.…”

Section: Hate Onlinementioning

confidence: 98%

Story-Chatterers Stirring up Hate: Racist Discourse in Reader Comments on U.S. Newspaper Websites

Harlow

2015

Howard Journal of Communications

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With reader comments posted to newspaper websites seemingly becoming increasingly vitriolic, newspapers across the country are weighing the pros and cons of allowing readers to post anonymous comments online. Using a content analysis of online reader comments from a random sample of U.S. newspapers, this study explores how readers discuss race in online newspaper forums, and provides insight for editors struggling to meet the objectives of the Kerner Commission. Results show that reader comments included racial terms, even when the article did not. Further, when reader comments mentioned race, they tended to be negative, reiterating stereotypes. Latinos were mentioned more often than other races/ethnicities in the comments, and comments that mentioned Latinos also were likelier to be negative. Beyond eliminating anonymous commenting, this study suggests newspapers should reconsider "color-blind" policies that ignore race and make a concerted effort to publish more articles that tackle race-related issues.KEYTERMS content analysis, ethnicity, media, race, stereotype/ prejudice/bias At 2 p.m. on May 17, 2010, the Boston Globe published online an article headlined "Obama's aunt given OK to stay in the United States." Within just 3 minutes, the first of a series of vitriolic reader comments was posted on the newspaper's website. At 3:41 p.m., less than two hours after the story first was published, a reader wrote,

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“…Among the top 100 US newspapers, 33 percent accepted article comments in 2007; the following year, it had risen to 75 percent (Johnson 2008). By 2010, among the top 150 US newspapers, 92 percent accepted online comments (Santana 2011). Unlike news stories, which can live on newspaper websites for months, years and even indefinitely in online archives, reader comments are usually an ephemeral part of a newspaper's content; they can appear and disappear while the original story remains on a newspaper's site.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtuous or Vitriolic

Santana¹

2013

Journalism Practice

Self Cite

327

144

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In an effort to encourage community dialogue while also building reader loyalty, online newspapers have offered a way for readers to become engaged in the news process, most popularly with online reader comment boards. It is here that readers post their opinion following an online news story, and however much community interaction taking place therein, one thing appears evident: sometimes the comments are civil; sometimes they are not. Indeed, one of the chief defining characteristics of these boards has become the rampant incivility*a dilemma many newspapers have struggled with as they seek to strengthen the value of the online dialogue. Many journalists and industry observers have pointed to a seemingly straightforward reason for the offensive comments: anonymity. Despite the claim, however, there is a striking dearth of empirical evidence in the academic literature of the effect that anonymity has on commenters' behavior. This research offers an examination of user comments of newspapers that allow anonymity (N 0450) and the user comments of newspapers that do not (N 0450) and compares the level of civility in both. In each group, comments follow news stories on immigration, a topic prevalent in the news in recent years and which is especially controversial and prone to debate. Results of this quantitative content analysis, useful for journalism practitioners and scholars, provide empirical evidence of the effect that anonymity has on the civility of user comments.

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Online Readers' Comments Represent New Opinion Pipeline

Abstract: Reporters at the country's largest U. S. daily newspapers generally take a dim view of the online reader comments. Many are troubled by their content and express dismay over their newspaper's providing a forum for anonymous discussion where emotions can run high.

Cited by 103 publications

References 8 publications

Online Story Commenting

Online Story Commenting

Story-Chatterers Stirring up Hate: Racist Discourse in Reader Comments on U.S. Newspaper Websites

Virtuous or Vitriolic

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