Presence of online reader comments lowers news site credibility

Conlin, Lindsey; Roberts, Chris

doi:10.1177/0739532916677056

Cited by 24 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…However, while much work investigates the effects of comments on perceptions of the issue (Anderson et al, 2014), the subject (von Sikorski, 2016), and the article (Houston et al, 2011) outlet perceptions are rarely investigated. A recent exception (Conlin & Roberts, 2016) finds comments decrease the credibility of a news outlet. While no research has looked at the conditional effects of author gender on the relationship between abusive comments and outlet credibility, research reviewed above suggests a dampening effect of women messengers on outlet credibility (Weibel et al, 2008).…”

Section: Conditional Gender Effects For Abusive Commentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Don’t read the comments: the effects of abusive comments on perceptions of women authors’ credibility

Searles

Spencer

Duru

2018

Information, Communication & Society

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Recent work suggests women authors experience more abuse in online comments than men, but we do not know whether these abusive comments affect people's perceptions. Given renewed interest in the experience of women online, we ask: does exposure to abusive comments affect perceptions of women authors' credibility? And does this penalty extend to the outlet? To answer these questions, we employed a survey experiment which manipulated exposure to an abusive comment, and author gender. We found a significant effect for the abusive comment on author credibility and intention to seek news from the author and outlet in the future, but gender of the author did not moderate these effects. To ensure the null effects for gender were not an artifact of comment or topic, we fielded two additional survey experiments. Across topics, whether the abuse was gendered or gender-specific, we found abusive comments exert significant negative effects on evaluations, regardless of author gender. Our results have implications for news organizations considering comments.

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Section: Conditional Gender Effects For Abusive Commentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Don’t read the comments: the effects of abusive comments on perceptions of women authors’ credibility

Searles

Spencer

Duru

2018

Information, Communication & Society

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“…Other studies used both scales in combination (e.g. Conlin and Roberts, 2016; Hughes et al, 2014). Message credibility is assessed by five bipolar items: (1) unbelievable or believable, (2) inaccurate or accurate, (3) not trustworthy or trustworthy, (4) biased or not biased, and (5) incomplete or complete (Roberts, 2010).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Algorithms in the newsroom? News readers’ perceived credibility and selection of automated journalism

2018

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Automated journalism, the autonomous production of journalistic content through computer algorithms, is increasingly prominent in newsrooms. This enables the production of numerous articles, both rapidly and cheaply. Yet, how news readers perceive journalistic automation is pivotal to the industry, as, like any product, it is dependent on audience approval. As audiences cannot verify all events themselves, they need to trust journalists' accounts, which make credibility a vital quality ascription to journalism. In turn, credibility judgments might influence audiences' selection of automated content for their media diet. Research in this area is scarce, with existing studies focusing on national samples and with no previous research on 'combined' journalism-a relatively novel development where automated content is supplemented by human journalists. We use an experiment to investigate how European news readers (N = 300) perceive different forms of automated journalism in regard to message and source credibility, and how this affects their selection behavior. Findings show that, in large part, credibility perceptions of human, automated, and combined content and source(s) may be assumed equal. Only for sports articles was automated content perceived significantly more credible than human messages. Furthermore, credibility does not mediate the likelihood of news readers to either select or avoid articles for news consumption. Findings are, among other things, explained by topic-specific factors

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“…Twitter is a rich source of data containing diverse views and perspectives from a wide range of individuals (Apoorva, Vaishnav, Chowdary, & Uddagiri, 2016). The simple presence of an open comment section on online media pages negatively influences the perception of the media's credibility (Conlin & Roberts, 2016;Prochazka, Weber, & Schweiger, 2018). However, even though both Facebook and Twitter are the two most popular platforms for public debates, users mostly prefer to make comments on the pages of the media themselves, as they can probably express themselves more frankly than in the case of a social network, in which, moreover, comments are automatically shared with friends, family, and acquaintances (Hille & Bakker, 2014).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behind the Comments Section: The Ethics of Digital Native News Discussions

Parra

Ayerdi

Peña-Fernández

2020

MaC

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Initially offered as a digital public sphere forum, comments sections became the preferred democratic arena for gatekeepers to encourage their readers to engage in constructive dialogue about relevant issues. However, news sites require commenters to remain civil in their interactions, which led users to seek alternative ways of commenting on the news. This article explores in-depth the contents of a sample of 98,426 user-comments collected between February–March 2019 from three major Spanish digital native newspapers: ElDiario.es, ElEspañol.com, and ElConfidencial.com. The main goals were to analyze whether comments in news outlets are deliberative, to assess the quality of the debate that takes place in them, and to describe their specific features. Discourse ethics were explored to determine the discussions’ impact, the language used, the acceptance of arguments, and the recognition and civility of participants. Findings reveal that comments sections in news outlets do not have a dialogic nature and that the debates have a low-quality profile. Nonetheless, the degree of mutual respect in interaction is acceptable, with slightly observed levels of incivility. Finally, the data suggest that the focused comments are higher on social media and that memes and emojis represent a new form of digital discourse.

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Presence of online reader comments lowers news site credibility

Cited by 24 publications

References 15 publications

Don’t read the comments: the effects of abusive comments on perceptions of women authors’ credibility

Don’t read the comments: the effects of abusive comments on perceptions of women authors’ credibility

Algorithms in the newsroom? News readers’ perceived credibility and selection of automated journalism

Behind the Comments Section: The Ethics of Digital Native News Discussions

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