Abstract
Media audiences representing a significant portion of the public in any given country may hold opinions on media-generated definitions of social problems which differ from those of media professionals. The proliferation of online reader comments not only makes such opinions available but also alters the process of agenda formation and problem definition in the public space. Based on a dataset of 33,877 news items and 258,121 comments from a sample of regional Russian newspapers we investigate readers’ perceptions of social problems. We find that the volume of attention paid to issues or topics by the media and the importance of those issues for audiences, as judged by the number of their comments, diverge. Further, while the prevalence of general negative sentiment in comments accompanies such topics as disasters and accidents that are not perceived as social problems, a high level of sentiment polarization in comments does suggest issue problematization. It is also positively related to topic importance for the audience. Thus, instead of finding fixed social problem definitions in the reader comments, we observe the process of problem formation, where different points of view clash. These perceptions are not necessarily those expressed in media texts since the latter are predominantly “hard” news covering separate events, rather than trends or issues. As our research suggests, problematization emerges from readers’ background knowledge, external experience, or values.
Highlights
Readers’ comments on the news within online media are increasingly used both as a source of audience feedback by media organizations and as a new type of empirical data by media scholars
We investigate whether issue salience in professional media content and its importance for the commenting audience are aligned, whether general negative sentiment in comments or comment polarization indicates issue problematization by audiences, and what issues exactly are framed as social problems by readers
We focus on Russia as a country in which the media are partially controlled as we expect that it is here that divergence between topic importance set by media and by readers should diverge most visibly
Summary
Readers’ comments on the news within online media are increasingly used both as a source of audience feedback by media organizations and as a new type of empirical data by media scholars. Unlike audience surveys and general public opinion polls, comment sections of media websites give users the ability to express themselves, in any form they choose, on issues they consider important The consequences of such a new form of public expression for the processes of media agenda formation, setting, and problematization has yet to be fully understood. Media and Communication, 2019, Volume 7, Issue 3, Pages 145–156 social media, we can formulate a number of further assumptions It is plausible, that through their comments, readers may be redefining the level of importance of agendas offered by media, as well as reframing some of them as problematic, altering or even subverting the professional definitions of the respective issues. We apply a range of methods, from innovative automatic text mining to traditional qualitative text interpretation
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