Online Commenting Research Articles

SMIAltmetric: A comprehensive metric for evaluating social media impact of scientific papers on Twitter (X)

The rise of social media has significantly influenced scholarly communication, knowledge dissemination, and research evaluation, leading to the enrichment of alternative metrics (altmetrics) for evaluating academic papers’ social impact, which assesses the social impact of academic papers through online activities, including reading, bookmarking, downloading, and commenting. However, these altmetrics often focus on the number of mentions on social media rather than thoroughly evaluating the source, content, and dissemination of these mentions. To address this gap, this study introduces the social media impact altmetric (SMIAltmetric), which is based on 44,087 publications and 860,680 tweets (now “posts”), a comprehensive scoring system for evaluating scientific papers on Twitter (now “X”), using diverse features, including literature-related, social media engagement-related, user-related, and content-related features. Employing Altmetric Attention Acores (AAS) as labels, we tested eight machine learning algorithms, with XGBoost demonstrating the highest accuracy at 0.8672. Crucial factors influencing SMIAltmetric, as identified by the SHAP value, were followers, retweets, mentions, and citation. Furthermore, consistency analysis and convergent validation between the proposed SMIAltmetric and AAS confirm the reliability and finer differentiation of SMIAltmetric. The proposed SMIAltmetric provides a more comprehensive understanding of a paper’s social media impact, enhancing the evaluation of scientific discourse and its engagement with society.

Kansei engineering for the intelligent connected vehicle functions: An online and offline data mining approach

The big data era enables automakers to mine users’ affective (Kansei) requirements for the car design. However, existing literature mostly applies text mining with users’ online comments, possibly leading to biased results since users without online comments were not considered. To fill in this gap, this paper proposes to jointly analyse users’ online commenting and offline usage big data, and develops a novel framework to efficiently fuse these two datasets for the Kansei engineering of the intelligent connected vehicle (ICV) functions. A behaviour-enhanced large language model is proposed to process users’ online comments; then, users’ Kansei requirements are further jointly analysed with their offline in-cabin behaviour data, by the proposed NLP-MDCEV (natural language process — multiple discrete-continuous extreme value) model, to understand user’s complex discrete and continuous choice decisions in the smart cockpit. In addition, the proposed framework aims to solve the problem of design tasks prioritization, where not all the Kansei requirements can be met if design resources are limited. The proposed framework is applied in the studied new energy vehicle company, with more than nine-months’ online comments and six-months’ offline usage data, where results suggest its merits of economic, efficient, and effective.

Follow the updates! Reconstructing past practices with web archive data

The article argues that data from web archives can help to reconstruct past practices: Drawing on the example of practices of online commenting, it shows that even though practices themselves are not archivable, artifacts with specific relations to these practices remain. Identifying relevant updates of these artifacts, following them beyond the archive and making them non-human research participants in a technographic sense, allows us to not only decentre web archives as dominant data source, but also to benefit from their richness as archives of artifacts. We situate this potential in a larger context of practice theory and explain our own approach of using web archive data, combining them with interviews and developing software to triangulate both with one another.

Disagreement strategies and institutional face attack in Chinese mainstream media editorial comments on Weibo

Abstract This paper explores how readers of Chinese mainstream media editorials use disagreement strategies to attack the institutional face of the mainstream media organizations on Weibo. By quantitative and qualitative analysis, the disagreement strategies in Weibo comments were elaborated based on the logos-oriented and ethos-oriented distinction. It was found that logos-oriented disagreements were employed to criticize the content of the editorial, ethos-oriented ad-hominem disagreements were employed to attack the trustworthiness and impartiality of the mainstream media organizations, and ethos-oriented ad-personam disagreements were pure insults to express their negative emotions to the mainstream media organizations. The findings suggested that the online commenting space of Chinese mainstream media editorials is a public sphere of combined deliberation and liberal individualism. This study adds to existing literature the disagreement strategies used in online comments while shedding light on the role of online comments in the public sphere building in the Chinese social media context.

О центростремительной тенденции в комментировании новостей в социальных сетях

The article considers the ratio of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies in online commenting. The research objective was to describe the consistency of comments to news texts published in social networks. This article focuses on the results obtained on the centripetal trend. The approach and methodology were based on the scientific hypothesis about the self-developing nature of communication in social networks. According to this hypothesis, the degree of subjectivity of online news discussion can be transmitted to the dialogue through the text of its comments. The original news text becomes the basis for comments, which are independent texts focused on the original news. As a result, the original text turns into a complex branched network. Comments develop as chains or branches of discussion responses, which can be analyzed. This research featured an Internet text from the Vkontakte social network, its comments, and their mental map. The ratio of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies revealed a certain pattern: the consistency of the original text determined the consistency of comments. The patterns of their correlation showed how the self-developing nature of communication created new linguistic phenomena. The article is of interest to specialists in Internet communication and social networks.

Do fake online comments pose a threat to regulatory policymaking? Evidence from Internet regulation in the United States

AbstractBroad stakeholder participation in regulatory policymaking via online commenting platforms has become the norm in many advanced democracies around the world. In recent years, a policy debate has emerged over the dangers posed to the process by fake comments that impersonate ordinary citizens. This paper helps to clarify the terms of this debate by evaluating a contentious and prominent case in the United States, the nearly 24 million comments from the Federal Communications Commission's 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom proceeding. Using a two‐step methodology that combines a computationally efficient search algorithm and a neural network language model, I show that regulators were able to cite much of the relevant information submitted in public comments by relying on longstanding methods of information gathering through interest groups, despite the fact that fake comments outnumbered others 3 to 1. The results suggest that fake comments did not impede regulators' ability to extract specialized information from the public consultation process, but may have distorted signals from mass comment campaigns about constituent mobilization.

English

Among the most popular online platforms for commenting following a news story are Facebook, Twitter and on the news website itself. Using personality characteristics, including from the Big-Five schema (extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness) and the Dark Tetrad frame (Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism and sadism), as well as personal motivations, the extent to which personality characteristics are predictors of news commenting behavior was determined, as well as the extent to which their personal motivations mediate and directly contribute to their behaviors. Based on a bi-national survey of 1,053 individuals, results suggest that extraversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness, and Machiavellianism all predict online commenting. Further, motivations to comment seem to fall along two dimensions: Those who wish to discuss, and those who wish to provoke, with the discussion factor playing a larger role in commenting behavior, and mediating or partially-mediating the relationship between certain personality traits and commenting.   Key words: Social media, news, personality, motivation.

Green Criminology and Rhetoric of Public Opinion: Online Commenting on Gas Rigs Near Israel's Coast

ABSTRACT This study identifies the key themes in online commenting on news reports about gas rig placements near Israel’s coastline. We employed an inductive thematic analysis to study 1276 comments and three main themes emerged from the analysis: (a) views on protesting against the rigs; (b) criminal labels; and (c) dangers of nearshore rigs. Although the majority of the comments supported the protest against the rigs, there was no consensus. The commenters who supported the protest described the acts that lead to environmental harm as criminal, deviant and corrupt. They also criticized the Israeli government and considered capital-government relations as the driving mechanism to place the rigs near the coast. The discussion addresses the meanings of the themes in the context of green cultural criminology, rhetorical strategies, including politics of definitions and causes, the rhetoric of rectitude and rationality, domain statements, and Aristotle’s rhetoric framework (logos, pathos, and ethos).

Komentarisanje na internetu - stavovi i navike građana Srbije

Online commenting has, at first glance, enabled the revival of the public sphere in which practically every man has the opportunity to have his voice heard. However, practical problems and specifics of this type of public communication indicate that commenting online is significantly different from the initially predominant idealistic assumptions. The aim of this paper is to investigate how and to what extent Internet users in Serbia are involved in online commenting, why and how they see the impact and significance of this phenomenon as a whole. The research was conducted by means of a questionnaire completed by 225 respondents. The results were analyzed by descriptive and comparative statistical methods and indicate that less than a half of the citizens do comment online, that most of them do not think it is possible to change other people's opinions in this manner, but they still consider it important and influential. Certain differences have also been observed in relation to the respondents' age and level of education.

Hateful and Other Negative Communication in Online Commenting Environments: Content, Structure and Targets

Information and communication technologies are increasingly interacting with modern societies. One specific manifestation of this interaction concerns hateful and other negative comments in online environments. Various terms appear to denote this communication, from flaming, indecency and intolerance to hate speech. However, there is still a lack of an umbrella term that broadly captures this communication. Therefore, this paper introduces the concept of socially unacceptable discourse, which serves as the basis for an empirical study that evaluated online comments scraped from the Facebook pages of the three most-visited Slovenian news outlets. Machine-learning algorithms were used to narrow the focus to topics related to refugees and LGBT rights. Ten thousand comments were manually coded to identify and structure socially undesirable discourse. The results show that about half of all comments belonged to this type of discourse, with a surprisingly stable level and structure across media (i.e., right-wing versus mainstream) and topics. Most of these comments could also be considered a potential violation of hate speech legislation. In the context of these findings, the political and ideological consequences and implications of mediatised emotions are discussed.

Monitoring and correcting: why women read and men comment online

ABSTRACT Using a probability sample of online news commenters and comment readers from the United States, we investigate gender differences in online commenting. We focus on two distinct behaviors in these spaces: commenting and reading and the motivations behind these practices. Our results indicate that men are more likely to leave online comments, while women are more likely to read online comments and not comment. Men are more likely than women to report commenting for corrective or information giving reasons. Women are more likely than men to report reading comments in order to gauge the public’s opinions. Moreover, these patterns of behavior were not dependent on topic – both men and women were equally likely to cite these reasons on both political topics and other news stories. We consider these results in light of the ongoing influence of gender role socialization and discuss their implications for public discourse engagement and opinion expression.

Contagion of Offensive Behavior for Transient Interactions in Online Commenting Platforms

ABSTRACT Online aggression is an increasingly significant problem in Internet-based communication systems (e.g., commenting platforms) with potentially negative effects on online participation and quality of online discourse. Similar to offline aggression, online aggression has been shown to be contagious and to spread through online platforms as a result of exposure to aggressive content. Among other demographics, young adults report experiencing online aggression at alarming rates. In this paper, we examine the short-term effects of exposure to different levels of online aggressive behavior, and investigate whether it leads to an increase in online aggression among 118 young adults. Using an emulated commenting environment, we found evidence for the contagious nature of aggressive commenting. Even when individuals knew comments were synthetic (and not generated by actual peers), exposure to higher levels of aggressive comments resulted in a statistically significant increase in user aggression. Surprisingly, our results show that anonymity neither increased nor decreased the aggression response, which could indicate a change in user behavior since the advent of Internet 2.0 technologies or qualms related to experimenter-subject anonymity. Consequently, the results in this paper support the hypothesis that even in transient online interactions, young adult participants mimic their peers in an attempt to minimize social stress. Moreover, this mimicking occurs even when the participants know they are participating in an artificial social system.

Handling with online comments: a longitudinal approach in most accessed news sites in Portugal, Spain and Brazil

Online comments have been a widespread feature in news media. Although audiences recognize it widely, doubts remain about the purpose of these interactive spaces. Arguably, understanding how media value online comments defines a way which public debates are socially perceived. Based on The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019, this article analysed current media policies towards online commenting in most accessed news websites in Portugal, Spain and Brazil. Following both a quantitative-qualitative methodology, a direct observation and a textual/visual analysis, this article highlights levels of similarity in these policies: comment sections are still predominantly available (31 from 45); comments are typically placed at the bottom of the page; the interactive options identical (share, like, dislike, report). As the overall cases exclude comment moderation, few media (in Portugal, but mostly in Spain) propose alternative models based on the community: voting, comment ranking and autonomous discussion forums.

Stance, framing, and the construction of reality in Facebook comments about Taiwan’s same-sex marriage bills

This study proposes an integrated framework to elucidate the process of socially constructing reality by examining how Facebook commenters argue over two same-sex marriage (SSM) bills in Taiwan. Through stance-taking, which involves evaluating, positioning and aligning with others, some commenters contest while others defend SSM by referencing the referendums and the laws. The analysis shows that (dis)alignments facilitate multiple ‘team performances’, that is, cooperative interactions that project competing definitions of the situation, or ‘frames’, within which events are interpreted differently: one bill is criticized as undemocratic while the other contradictory. This bottom-up approach emphasizes participants’ agentive role in shaping the public discourse. The discourse analysis of online comments illustrates reality as constituted by negotiation over taken-for-granted concepts in the digital age, while highlighting the intersubjectivity in large-scale platforms like Facebook and how online commenting is used to (re)frame issues.

Exploring characteristics of online news comments and commenters with machine learning approaches

Despite the pervasiveness and significant influence of online news comments, few studies have examined people’s commenting behaviors regarding online news articles. This study examined the distribution of age and gender of online news commenters according to news topics. Using a computational approach, we collected publicly available data on online news comments and commenters from the most popular South Korean news aggregator during a three-month period spanning May to July 2016. The clusters of news were identified and categorized using machine learning techniques. The comments and commenters of 20,929 news articles were examined. We found that there were age and gender differences in commenting behaviors that varied based on news topics. Findings concerning large discrepancies in the ages and genders of commenters suggest that online commenting systems should be improved in a way that can guarantee more diverse opinions from readers.

Community feedback on scholarly content: why it is important and why it should be preserved

The provision of community feedback on the exploration of science is as old as the quest itself. As the publication process has evolved and collaboration technology has adapted along with it, feedback has moved from letters to listservs to preprints to online commenting and annotation. The February 2017 approval of open standards for web annotation provides the infrastructure for an interoperable collaborative annotation layer that will make conversations over scientific content ubiquitous and standard. How is annotation different from current commenting tools? What happens when websites discontinue support for comments, as happened in February 2018 when the National Center for Biotechnology Information announced the end of PubMed Commons? Learn how this community feedback was preserved in the form of annotations that support the FAIR data principles that they be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

Dangerous minds? Effects of uncivil online comments on aggressive cognitions, emotions, and behavior

Despite the potential of online commenting spaces for public deliberation, they are often full of destructive or uncivil and aggressive comments. Based on research on social learning and social influence, we conducted an online experiment to investigate the effects of uncivil comments on readers' cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions. The experiment was built on a one-factorial between-subjects design including four experimental conditions and a control group: Participants were exposed to a news article and six user comments of which zero, one, three, or six were uncivil. Results suggest that exposure to uncivil comments can lead to an increase in readers' hostile cognitions. The effect, however, does not rise with exposure to a higher proportion of incivility. No significant effects were found on hostile emotions or the use of incivility in readers' own comments.

Anonymity and Online Commenting: An Empirical Study

In this study we ask how regulations about commenter identity affect the quantity and quality of discussion on commenting fora. In December 2013, the Huffington Post changed the rules for its comment forums to require participants to authenticate their accounts through Facebook. This enabled a large-scale ‘before and after’ analysis. We collected over 42m comments on 55,000 HuffPo articles published in the period January 2013 to June 2014 and analysed them to determine how changes in identity disclosure impacted on discussions in the publication’s comment pages. Our results support the two dominant hypotheses in the literature: the move away from disposable identities resulted in sharply reduced commenting levels and improved user behaviour, partly because the worst offenders withdrew, and partly as commenters modified their tone. However, we found the rate of reduction to vary widely across subject areas: subjects particularly prone to spamming saw the greatest reduction in interaction, while a number of issues saw little reduction at all.

Observing the Evolution of Marginalized Youth’s Identity through Critical Literacy, Critical Pedagogy and Online Commenting,

Observing the Evolution of Marginalized Youth’s Identity through Critical Literacy, Critical Pedagogy and Online Commenting,

Political Participation and Ideological News Online: “Differential Gains” and “Differential Losses” in a Presidential Election Cycle

Observations of the contemporary news media environment often revolve around the topics of ideological polarization and blurred boundaries between mass and interpersonal communication. This study explores these topics through a focus on the association between ideologically oriented online news use, commenting on online news, and political participation. We hypothesize that both ideological online news use generally and proattitudinal online news use are positively related to political participation and that online news commenting creates “differential gains” by augmenting these relationships. Yet we also hypothesize that counterattitudinal online news use is negatively related to political participation and that online news commenting creates “differential losses” by exacerbating this relationship. Analyses of two independently collected and nationally representative surveys found that frequent ideological online news use, proattitudinal online news use, and commenting are all positively related to political participation. We found no evidence for differential gains as a result of online commenting but only for differential losses—counterattitudinal online news use interacts with commenting to create a negative relationship with political participation.