Cilj je rada istražiti komentare čitatelja na tri hrvatska informativna portala (24sata.hr, Index.‎hr i Net.hr) o kontroverznom prijedlogu Muzičke akademije i rektora Zagrebačkog sveučilišta da‎ se tadašnjem zagrebačkom gradonačelniku Milanu Bandiću dodjeli počasni doktorat. U ovom članku ‎komentari se istražuju u okviru teorijskog koncepta digitalne javne sfere i koncepta deliberativno-demokratske ‎javne sfere, prema kojem umreženo društvo participacijom građana, kroz decentraliziranu i‎ interaktivnu komunikaciju, osim komunikacije, transformira i oblikuje odnose moći među ljudima. Metodom ‎kvantitativne analize sadržaja 2852 komentara objavljena u razdoblju od 27. studenoga 2018. do 15.‎travnja 2019. analiziran je odnos između opreme članaka i komentara, provedena je analiza sentimenta‎ kao metoda za skupljanju polariteta emocija za uvid u raspoloženje komentatora (Liu, 2012), a s aspekta‎ Dahlbergovih kategorija (2007), analiziran je doprinos javnoj raspravi. Rezultati pokazuju izrazito negativan ‎stav građana prema prijedlogu o dodjeli počasnoga doktorata zagrebačkom gradonačelniku Milanu‎ Bandiću, čini se da postoji povezanost između negativno intoniranih naslova i fotografija članaka ‎s raspoloženjem komentatora i utvrđena je relativno mala prisutnost neprihvatljivoga govora i govora‎ mržnje, čak i u negativnim komentarima, te niska razina argumentirane rasprave.‎ The aim of this paper is to analyse readers’ comments on three Croatian news websites ‎(24sata.hr, Index.hr and Net.hr) about the controversial proposal of the Head of the University of ‎Zagreb to award an honorary doctorate to the Mayor of Zagreb Milan Bandić. In this article, comments‎ are explored within the theoretical concept of the digital public sphere and the concept of deliberative-democratic ‎public sphere, according to which, a networked society transforms and shapes not only ‎communication but also power relations among people through participation of citizens, through ‎decentralised and interactive communication. A quantitative content analysis was conducted on 2852‎comments published in the period from 27 November 2018 to 15 April 2019, i.e., in the period in which the ‎topic was part of the media agenda. The relationship between headlines, photographs and comments ‎was analysed. A sentiment analysis was performed as a method for gathering the polarity of emotions ‎of commentators (Liu, 2012) and as an aspect of Dahlberg’s categories (2007), the contribution to public ‎debate was analysed. The results show a very negative attitude of citizens towards the proposal to award ‎an honorary doctorate to Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić. A connection is implied between negative stylistic ‎expressions of titles and photographs of articles with attitudes of the commentators. Furthermore, a‎ relatively small amount of hostility speech and hate speech was found, even in negative comments and ‎discussions with low levels of argumentation.‎