Online social environments and their impact on video viewers: The effects of user comments on entertainment experiences and knowledge gain during political satire consumption

Anne Marthe Möller,Mark Boukes

doi:10.1177/14614448211015984

Abstract

Political satire is often consumed on online platforms (e.g. YouTube) and the effects of its consumption may be highly conditional on the user comments that are surrounding it. By manipulating the valence of comments (positive vs negative) and the focus of these comments (hedonic entertainment value vs eudaimonic entertainment value vs informative value), this pre-registered experiment investigates how user comments affect satire viewers’ hedonic entertainment experiences, their eudaimonic entertainment experiences, and their knowledge gain. Analyses showed that the valence of comments congruently affected viewers’ hedonic entertainment experiences, eudaimonic entertainment experiences, and subjective knowledge gain, but not their objective knowledge gain. In addition, the focus of user comments affected eudaimonic entertainment experiences and knowledge gain regardless of comments’ valence. This study’s findings advance our understanding of how viewers are affected when they consume media content that is surrounded by the comments of other viewers.

Highlights

Political satire is often consumed on online platforms (e.g. YouTube) and the effects of its consumption may be highly conditional on the user comments that are surrounding it
An independent samples t-test showed that participants exposed to positive comments experienced more hedonic enjoyment in response to political satire (M = 1.00, SD = 1.25) than did participants who were exposed to negative comments (M = 0.10, SD = 1.48)
To assess the hypothesis that satire viewers exposed to positive comments experience more eudaimonic entertainment than viewers exposed to negative comments, another independent samples t-test was run: Viewers who saw positive comments experienced more eudaimonic entertainment (M = 0.77, SD = 1.11) than those who saw negative comments (M = 0.19, SD = 1.22), 95% confidence interval (CI) = [−0.79, −0.35], t(435) = –5.14, p < .001, Cohen’s d =

Summary

Introduction

Political satire is often consumed on online platforms (e.g. YouTube) and the effects of its consumption may be highly conditional on the user comments that are surrounding it. Krämer et al, 2019; Möller et al, 2021; Waddell and Bailey, 2019; Waddell and Sundar, 2017; Winter et al, 2018) These studies found that media consumption leads audiences to feel more entertained when the message is accompanied by positive (compared to negative) comments. A comment can (positively or negatively) write about, for example, the informative value of a video, but another comment could write about its entertainment value It is unknown how the focus of comments influences the experiences of media audiences, and how this moderates the effect of comment valence. Hedonic entertainment experiences refer to the enjoyment or pleasure that people experience when they consume media content that is mirth-inducing or funny (Bartsch and Hartmann, 2017; Oliver and Bartsch, 2010; Oliver and Raney, 2011; Waterman, 1993; Wirth et al, 2012)

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