Incivility in user comments on news websites has been discussed as a significant problem of online participation. Previous research suggests that news outlets should tackle this problem by ...interactively moderating uncivil postings and asking their authors to discuss more civilized. We argue that this kind of interactive comment moderation as well as different response styles to uncivil comments (i.e., factual vs. sarcastic) differently affect observers’ evaluations of the discussion atmosphere, the credibility of the news outlet, the quality of its stories, and ultimately observers’ willingness to participate in the discussions. Results from an online experiment show that factual responses to uncivil comments indirectly increase participation rates by suggesting a deliberative discussion atmosphere. In contrast, sarcastic responses indirectly deteriorate participation rates due to a decrease in the credibility of the news outlet and the quality of its stories. Sarcastic responses however increase the entertainment value of the discussions.
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Previous research suggests that distinct characteristics of news articles, such as their news factors, account for the different participation rates in comment sections as well as the degree of ...interactivity among the discussants. In this study, this assumption is tested in the Facebook environment and extended to the analysis of how news factors (i.e., event characteristics) and illustration factors (i.e., characteristics resulting from a specific journalistic editing) of news articles predict the inclusiveness of discussions, as well as the occurrence of civility, rationality, and deliberative interactivity in user comments. A content analysis of 619 news articles and 11,218 related user comments on nine nation-wide Facebook news pages reveals that the news factors controversy, latent conflict, contravention, obtrusiveness, and impact particularly account for specific discussion qualities. The results also show that the illustration factors emotional language/visualizations, slant, and conversational prompts affect the deliberative quality of the discussions.
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•We conducted an online survey with 581 SNS users.•We developed a scale measuring SNS addiction.•SNS specific motives mediate the effect of intrinsic needs on SNS addiction.•People try to compensate ...thwarted intrinsic needs with gratifications from SNS use.•Gratifications sought from SNS use can cause addictive SNS usage patterns.
The present paper aims at exploring the new phenomenon of social network site (SNS) addiction and at identifying predictors of problematic SNS use. For this purpose, a scale measuring addictive behavior specifically with regard to SNS use was developed. The effects of intrinsic need satisfaction in the offline context and of SNS-specific motives on SNS addiction were tested in an online-survey among 581 SNS users in Germany. It was hypothesized that motives mediate the influence of thwarted intrinsic need satisfaction on addictive behavior on SNSs. More precisely, we assumed that a lack of autonomy leads to a higher motivation to use SNSs for self-presentation and escapism, a lack of competence predicts the motive to use SNSs for acquiring information and self-presentation, and a lack of relatedness fosters users’ motives to use SNSs for self-presentation and meeting new people. These motives, in turn, were predicted to be associated with higher levels of SNS addiction. All proposed mediation models were supported by the data. The results emphasize the importance of incorporating both offline need satisfaction and gratifications sought through the use of SNS to provide a comprehensive perspective on addictive behavior on SNSs.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
The “privacy calculus” approach to studying online privacy implies that willingness to engage in disclosures on social network sites (SNSs) depends on evaluation of the resulting risks and benefits. ...In this article, we propose that cultural factors influence the perception of privacy risks and social gratifications. Based on survey data collected from participants from five countries (Germany n = 740, the Netherlands n = 89, the United Kingdom n = 67, the United States n = 489, and China n = 165), we successfully replicated the privacy calculus. Furthermore, we found that culture plays an important role: As expected, people from cultures ranking high in individualism found it less important to generate social gratifications on SNSs as compared to people from collectivist-oriented countries. However, the latter placed greater emphasis on privacy risks—presumably to safeguard the collective. Furthermore, we identified uncertainty avoidance to be a cultural dimension crucially influencing the perception of SNS risks and benefits. As expected, people from cultures ranking high in uncertainty avoidance found privacy risks to be more important when making privacy-related disclosure decisions. At the same time, these participants ascribed lower importance to social gratifications—possibly because social encounters are perceived to be less controllable in the social media environment.
Comment sections below news articles are public fora in which potentially everyone can engage in equal and fair discussions on political and social issues. Yet, empirical studies have reported that ...many comment sections are spaces of selective participation, discrimination, and verbal abuse. The current study complements these findings by analyzing gender-related differences in participation and incivility. It uses a sample of 303,342 user comments from 14 German news media Facebook pages. We compare participation rates of female and male users as well as associations between the users’ gender, the incivility of their comments, and the incivility of the adjacent replies. To determine the incivility of the comments, we developed a Supervised Machine Learning Model (classifier) using pre-trained word embeddings and word// frequency features. The findings show that, overall, women participate less than men. Comments written by female authors are more civil than comments written by male authors. Women’s comments do not receive more uncivil replies than men’s comments and women are not punished disproportionately for communicating uncivilly. These findings contribute to the discourse on gender-related differences in online comment sections and provide insights into the dynamics of online discussions.
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This study investigates how exposure to different news sources, propensity to vote (PTV) for a party and demographics are related to belief in conspiracy theories drawing on three repeated ...cross-sectional surveys in Germany 2017–2019. Results show that frequent exposure to alternative news sites and video-sharing platforms increased conspiratorial beliefs. Frequency of exposure to the quality press, public service TV news, and news aggregators diminished beliefs in conspiracy theories. Exposure to TV news, legacy media online, tabloids, social media, and user comments was unrelated to such beliefs. PTV for far left and right parties increased conspiratorial beliefs, moderate party preference reduced them.
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Incivility in online user discussions is discussed as a significant challenge for democratic societies. Interactive journalistic moderation is seen as a promising strategy to deal with and prevent ...online incivility. Such moderation occurs, for example, when journalists publicly respond to uncivil comments and ask their authors to discuss more civilly. This study, based on a quantitative content analysis of 9,763 user and moderation comments on the Facebook sites of 15 German news outlets, investigated the patterns, determinants, and potential effects of interactive moderation. Results show that so-called public-level incivility (e.g., stereotypes, threats of violence) in users’ initial comments was associated with more interactive journalistic moderation, and that journalists used different styles when responding to these comments. Different moderation styles of initial comments were then related to the presence of incivility in users’ subsequent reply comments in opposite directions: A sociable moderation style decreased, and a regulative style increased the level of incivility in the reply comments.
The global corona crisis has increased people’s information seeking and their use of voice assistants as providers of current information on the pandemic. However, little is known regarding the kind ...and quality of information that different voice assistants provide on corona-related topics. Adapting previous studies in the domain of medical research for communication research, the current study presents the results of a quantitative content analysis of the responses of smartphone-based versions of the voice assistants Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant to 25 corona-related questions between March and May 2020 (N = 603 question-answer-sets). The findings reveal that the assistants were able to provide fitting answers to most of the questions, but that they struggled with questions requiring background information. Interestingly, instead of providing spoken answers to the questions, Google Assistant and Siri mainly displayed lists of search results, essentially making them voice-controlled search engines. Regarding the quality of fully spoken responses of the voice assistants, we found that, overall, the assistants relied on trustworthy sources. Still, the accuracy and correctness of Alexa’s spoken responses were superior to the responses that the other voice assistants provided. Generally, there were significant differences between the kind and quality of the answers of the different voice assistants. The findings provide genuine insights into the abilities of different voice assistants to serve as reliable and trustworthy information intermediaries in a pandemic.
Die globale Coronakrise hat das Bedürfnis von Menschen nach Information und Orientierung erhöht und in diesem Zuge auch zu einer stärkeren Nutzung von Sprachassistenten als Vermittlern von aktuellen Informationen über die Pandemie geführt. Bisher ist allerdings wenig über die Art und Qualität der Informationen bekannt, die verschiedene Sprachassistenten zu coronabezogenen Themen geben. In Anlehnung an frühere Studien aus medizinischen Disziplinen hat die aktuelle Studie zwischen März und Mai 2020 eine quantitative Inhaltsanalyse durchgeführt: Es wurden die Antworten von Smartphone-basierten Versionen der Sprachassistenten Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri und Google Assistant auf 25 coronabezogene Fragen analysiert (N = 603 Frage-Antwort-Sets). Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Assistenten passende Antworten auf die meisten Fragen geben konnten. Sie hatten allerdings Schwierigkeiten mit Fragen, die Hintergrundinformationen erfordern. Interessanterweise gaben Google Assistant und Siri kaum gesprochenen Antworten, sondern zeigten hauptsächlich Listen von Suchergebnissen an, was sie im Wesentlichen zu sprachgesteuerten Suchmaschinen macht. Bezüglich der Qualität der ausschließlich gesprochenen Antworten der Sprachassistenten war festzustellen, dass sie sich insgesamt auf vertrauenswürdige Quellen stützten. Dennoch waren die Genauigkeit und Korrektheit der gesprochenen Antworten von Alexa den anderen Sprachassistenten überlegen. Generell gab es signifikante Unterschiede zwischen der Art und Qualität der Antworten der verschiedenen Sprachassistenten. Die Ergebnisse geben neue Einblicke in die Fähigkeit der verschiedenen Sprachassistenten, als zuverlässige und vertrauenswürdige Informationsvermittler in einer Pandemie zu dienen.
The present study contributes to the investigation of communicative norms and social support in Social Network Sites (SNSs). We suggest that a positivity bias restricts the availability of social ...support users receive from others via public responses to negative status updates. Moderated mediation analyses of the data of an online experiment (N = 870, Mage = 25.16 years, 64% female) show that users are less willing to comment on negative status updates than on positive ones. In contrast, users are more willing to respond to negative status updates with private messages. These effects are moderated by the strength of the relationship between sender and receiver of the status update and mediated by perceived message appropriateness and support urgency. The results suggest that SNS users canalize supportive reactions to negative experience of their close SNS friends through private modes of communication.
•The availability of public social support on SNSs is limited by communicative norms.•We extend the concept of a “positivity bias” to responses to SNS status updates.•Negative status updates impede users’ willingness to respond with a public comment.•Response willingness is mediated by message appropriateness and support urgency.•Only close friends are willing to provide support via private messages.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
In unserem Beitrag untersuchen wir am Beispiel der Identitären Bewegung die Auswirkungen von Deplatforming – dem Sperren von Akteuren auf sozialen Netzwerken – auf die Online-Kommunikation von ...politisch rechten bzw. rechtsextremen Akteuren. Mittels quantitativer Inhaltsanalyse wurde die Kommunikation von zwei Akteuren der Identitären Bewegung auf Telegram vor und nach der Sperrung dieser Akteure auf Twitter untersucht. Vergleiche zwischen den Zeiträumen vor und nach der Sperrung erfolgten hinsichtlich der Kommunikationsfrequenz, der Postreichweite, des Kommunikationsstils und der inhaltlichen Radikalität. Zugrunde liegen der aktuelle Forschungsstand in diesem Themenfeld sowie Theorien von Repressionen, der Gegenöffentlichkeit und des Konzeptes der Dangerous Speech. Es zeigt sich, dass der Kommunikationsumfang nach der Sperrung abnimmt, die Reichweite des Telegramkanals wächst, der kommunikative Stil weitgehend konstant bleibt und eine inhaltliche Radikalisierung nur partiell zu beobachten ist.
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