Disconnected discourse: Examining the relationship between comment policies and commenter civility on news websites.

摘要

Often cited for being flooded with vitriolic dialogue, news website comment boards are seen as annoying, disruptive, and harmful by some journalists and scholars. Though "the Internet presents a unique opportunity for people to engage in political discourse," the majority of research on these spaces focuses on the problems with anonymity, trolls, and moderation techniques (Leavitt & Peacock, 2014). Given the time, money, and human resources needed to keep online discussions fruitful, it is important to discover ways news organizations can create more civil commenting spaces. By examining the many messages from the audience with a quantitative analysis and the few messages from the news organizations with a qualitative analysis, this research study aimed to learn more about the relationship between what news organizations tell commenters is expected of them and how commenters behave. Statistical analysis did not find a significant relationship between comment policy visibility and commenting civility or frequency, but because of the several mitigating factors involved and small sample size of this study, further research is recommended to examine this complex computer-mediated communication space.