Reader Commenting

MARC ZIEGELE
Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany

In online journalism, reader commenting refers to the activities of Internet users to pub-
licly express and interactively discuss their thoughts and emotions on current events
covered in news articles on the websites or social media outlets of news media—often
by filling in a form at the bottom of the articles. These written comments normally
appear below the related news articles. Reader commenting is at the core of the con-
cept of audience participation in journalistic news reporting. In contrast to other forms
of participation that require much time and effort from users and involve high lev-
els of journalistic control, comment sections provide news audiences with an imme-
diate, interactive, and far-reaching possibility to participate in the interpretation of
current events and in the subjective evaluation of news quality. Writing and reading
comments are currently two of the most widespread user activities in the domain of
online participation.
First studies of reader commenting emerged around the turn of the millennium.
Since then the literature on comments has grown significantly, but different labels have
been attached to the phenomenon. Studies of computer-mediated communication
have investigated reader commenting as a manifestation of “user-generated content” or
“human interactivity.” Journalism studies typically refer to concepts such as “participa-
tory/reciprocal/citizen journalism” or “audience feedback” to contextualize comments.
Studies in political communication embed reader commenting in the concepts of
“public discussions” and “online deliberation.” Scholars in the domain of interper-
sonal communication have studied comments as “media-stimulated interpersonal
communication” or “conversations among users.”
The main feature of comment sections is a text box underneath news articles in
which readers type their comments. Some news media outlets limit the number of
words of a single comment or they restrict the use of hyperlinks and visual elements.
Readers can also sometimes rate the comments of others or reply to them. After
publication, comments are typically displayed below the news articles and are ranked
by date and time or by the number of recommendations received. Various news outlets
also curate selected comments, which then feature more prominently than other
comments. Comment sections allowing users to directly respond to other users often
display the comments in a threaded structure of reactive comments (i.e., comments
responding to the article) and interactive comments (i.e., comments responding to
other users). Comment sections further differ regarding whether providers require
users to register before writing comments and regarding the content of the policies
defining what users are (not) allowed to write. Regarding the latter, most media
outlets at least ask their users to write topic-related and respectful comments. These
The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies. Tim P. Vos and Folker Hanusch (General Editors),
Dimitra Dimitrakopoulou, Margaretha Geertsema-Sligh and Annika Sehl (Associate Editors).
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118841570.iejs0059
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policies are enforced through the means of moderation. Comment sections differ
regarding whether moderators screen comments, whether they interactively respond to
comments, and whether readers themselves can report comments that violate policies.
Historically, reader comments are successors of traditional forms of audience feed-
back, most importantly letters to the editor. Still, there are major differences between
letters to the editor and comments (Reich, 2011).

• Lower barriers: Journalists publish only a small fraction of the letters to the editor
they receive. Comment sections are more inclusive spaces, in which most reader
contributions are published if they do not violate predefined rules.
• Higher interactivity: Most letters to the editor represent an interaction between a
journalist and a single recipient. Comment sections allow readers to interactively
respond to other users, thereby creating public interpersonal discussions of current
events.
• Higher coherence, speed, and reach: Letters to the editor are published in sub-
sequent volumes of newspapers/magazines and in separated sections. Comment
sections are usually attached to the bottom of a related article, thereby facilitating
immediate and coherent discussions, while at the same time increasing the proba-
bility that a larger share of an article’s audience will read the comments.

It is assumed that such specifics of reader comments account for differences regard-
ing their content. For example, a study reported that from an overall view, comments
provided a more balanced range and tone of opinions than did letters to the editor
(McCluskey & Hmielowski, 2012). However, it has also been suggested that single com-
ments are less rational and civil than letters to the editor.
Other phenomena related to reader commenting include online discussion forums.
Contrary to user comments, these forums are usually detached from news articles and
many forums do not offer a predefined topic, but allow readers to introduce the topics
themselves. Additionally, forum topics are usually open for discussion for a few weeks
or even months while many comment sections close after several hours or days.
Scholars study reader commenting using various theoretical approaches. From a
democratic perspective, scholars often see comments through the lens of normative
concepts of the public sphere, such as deliberative democracy (Ruiz et al., 2011).
These concepts suggest that healthy democracies need to offer citizens access to a
wide variety of views on topics and the possibility to discuss these topics with others.
This allows citizens to participate in the public discourse on social issues and make
informed and rational decisions. While established news media offer only a selection
of viewpoints, reader comments could enrich the public sphere by providing citizens
equal opportunities to make themselves heard, thereby increasing the variety of views
on a topic and enabling inclusive discussions on current events.
Scholars in journalism studies have theorized about how comments are changing
the relationship between journalists and readers and about the value of comments. Par-
ticipatory journalism locates reader commenting at the end of the news production
process, that is, at the interpretation stage (Reich, 2011). From this perspective, reader
commenting does not fundamentally disrupt journalism, but rather keeps journalists in
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control of the news production and the agenda setting processes, while at the same time
allowing users to enrich journalistic coverage with additional opinions, sentiments, and
first-hand experiences. Concepts such as reciprocal or interactive journalism sketch a
more profound change of journalism. It is argued that online journalists need to move
from one-way-communication to a more interactive and community-oriented form of
journalism, where they engage in significant interactions with their audience. Encour-
aging, curating, and moderating user participation in comment sections is at the core of
both concepts and is assumed to be linked to the long-term journalistic and economic
success of news outlets, for example, in terms of website traffic and readers’ loyalty
toward news brands.
From the perspective of news audiences, scholars have theorized about why users
write and read comments and how these comments affect other readers (Ziegele, Weber,
Quiring, & Breiner, 2017). Regarding the former, involvement-based approaches posit
that users will more likely engage in comment sections if they feel that articles or
other readers’ comments connect to or threaten their attitudes, values, knowledge,
and/or behaviors which they perceive as key to their personal or social identity.
Scholars applying the uses-and-gratification approach argue that users actively seek
various gratifications by engaging in comment sections. To investigate the effects of
comment reading on users’ perceptions, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors, scholars
have referred to theories of media psychology and persuasion research, such as the
spiral of silence, the social identity model of deindividuation effects, social learning
theory, the third-person effect, exemplification theory, and models of dual processing,
such as the elaboration-likelihood model.
Current empirical research uses these theoretical approaches to provide insights into
the phenomenon of reader commenting. Regarding writers and readers of comments,
studies have shown that between 14% and 28% of the online users of Western industri-
alized countries post comments on news articles at least once a week (Newman, 2016).
Germany is an outlier, with only 10% of online users writing comments frequently. This
share, however, increases to 23% when including users who write comments less fre-
quently than once a week. Still, reading comments is more widespread than writing
them; almost half of U.S. citizens read user comments, most of them on social media
platforms. In Germany, about 40% of online users read comments at least once a week.
Driven by a long history of participatory inequality in the social web, studies
have also investigated the characteristics of comment writers. Writing comments is
particularly popular among users with high ideological strength, high political interest,
low trust in the news media, and high usage frequency of social media and news
websites (Kalogeropoulos, Negredo, Picone, & Nielsen, 2017). Age and education,
in contrast, do not separate writers from nonwriters of comments. Only gender is a
significant predictor. More males are among the comment writers on the websites of
news media and more females write comments on the social media platforms of news
organizations. Still, a small minority of “heavy users” account for a disproportionally
high share of comments.
Research investigating the motivations of users to write and read comments has
shown that across U.S. citizens, users’ most common motivations to read comments
are to learn about the opinions of others and about the “pulse of the community,” to
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get more information on a story, or to be entertained by others’ comments (Springer,

Engelmann, & Pfaffinger, 2015). Regarding comment writing, research has classified
users’ motivations according to whether they perceive comments as an instrument to
criticize and control journalism (“fifth estate”), as a possibility to chat and socialize with
others (“social meeting point”), as a stage on which they can release their emotions
and/or engage in impression management in front of a large audience (“ego stage”),
as a network of information exchange (“information network”), or as a platform to
interactively discuss their opinions on social issues (“discussion forum”).
Regarding news organizations’ management and journalists’ perceptions of com-
ments, empirical research has found that newsrooms have been hesitant to adapt their
practices to interactivity and user participation. Still, with the ongoing advance of the
Internet and social media, the number of news outlets providing comment sections on
their websites increased between 2007 and 2010 (Larsson, 2018). Since then, however,
several news outlets have begun to restrict users’ ability to write comments to “light”
topics, to shut down their comment sections altogether, or to outsource them to social
media platforms such as Facebook. Still, in late 2013, more than 90% of U.S. newspapers
and television websites provided comment sections (Stroud, Scacco, & Curry, 2016).
Nevertheless, studies have shown that many journalists had and still have an ambiva-
lent relationship with the comments of their readers. Although they generally appreciate
comments and regularly read them—some journalists even equal the number of com-
ments below their articles with success—they are often swamped by the volume and the
speed of reader comments and frustrated by the high share of seemingly uncivil, worth-
less, or even abusive comments (Larsson, 2018). Comparative surveys of journalists
and readers have demonstrated that journalists are more skeptical than their audiences
regarding the importance, value, and quality of comments. Major concerns of journal-
ists include that comments do not add journalistic value but rather damage the quality
of news articles and the reputation of news brands, and that moderating comments is
a time-consuming yet useless activity. On the plus side, particularly younger and social
media savvy journalists perceive comments as necessary to attract readers and as useful
to detect audience preferences, spot errors in articles, and to identify sources, ideas, and
exemplars they can use for further reporting (Reich, 2011).
Research investigating how news organizations manage and moderate reader com-
ments has revealed that journalists and editors perceive a tension between preserving
the quality and authority of the news organization on the one hand and giving their
audience the right to express themselves freely on the other one. Depending on which
stance news organizations take, studies have distinguished a more “traditionalist”
approach to comment moderation from a more liberal and interactive “converger”
approach (Robinson, 2010). “Traditionalists” try to preserve traditional hierarchies
between journalists and audiences and apply authoritative moderation strategies,
such as filtering inappropriate comments before their publication (premoderation) or
editing and deleting them afterward (postmoderation). “Convergers” are more open
to interactive forms of comment moderation, which include performing a variety of
“true” interactions with their readers, such as responding to comments and providing
additional information, answering questions, or keeping discussions on topic. Still,
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even many “convergers” are hesitant to interactively discuss with their users in com-
ment sections because it is a resource-consuming activity and perceived as potentially
harmful to journalistic standards, such as accuracy and fairness (Ziegele & Jost, 2016).
Another recurring theme in empirical user comment research is the question of com-
ment quality. Many news outlets are open to user participation, but only if users engage
in productive or at least nonhazardous ways. Additionally, from a normative stand-
point, scholars and politicians want citizens to discuss current events in a rational and
civil manner. Mostly against the background of deliberative theory, researchers have
therefore derived various quality criteria and applied them in content analyses of reader
comments. Common criteria to evaluate user comments include:

• Civility: Civility reflects the need for mutual recognition among participants to be
equal actors speaking in their own manner. Uncivil behavior, in contrast, is the
expression of disagreement by denying and disrespecting the justice of the oppos-
ing views. Examples from comments include the use of derogatory language, verbal
aggression, and other linguistic markers for disrespect. The share of incivility in
comment sections varies across studies and typically ranges from 10% to 30% of all
comments analyzed (e.g., Coe, Kenski, & Rains, 2014).
• Rationality: Studies measuring rationality investigate whether users corroborate
their positions with reasons and empirical evidence, avoid topic shifts, and propose
solutions for issues. Although various empirical studies have found that a signifi-
cant share of comments adheres to at least some of the norms of rationality, other
research has shown that single indicators, such as the use of arguments, appear in
less than one third of the comments analyzed (Rowe, 2015).
• Interactivity: In comment sections, highly interactive discussions occur when read-
ers consider and refer to the content of previously published user comments. Again,
some studies have reported comparatively low levels of interactivity while others
have identified that up to 57% of all comments analyzed were interactive (e.g., Rowe,
2015).

Research has also assessed how the context of reader commenting affects the quality
and volume of comments. Important context variables include the topic of news arti-
cles, news factors of the reported events, slant and journalistic bias, characteristics of
the first few comments posted to the article, different platform designs, and different
moderation strategies of comment sections (Ksiazek, 2018). Most consistently, “hard
news” and political topics attract the highest volume of comments but also the high-
est share of uncivil comments; comments on the news organizations’ websites are more
rational but sometimes less civil and interactive than the comments on the respective
organizations’ Facebook sites; news factors indicating conflict, controversy, proximity,
and high impact of an event increase the volume of comments but decrease their civil-
ity; opinion pieces attract higher volumes of comments; incivility in the first comments
triggers further incivility; and (interactive) journalistic moderation increases both the
quality and the volume of comments.
Finally, a growing number of studies investigate the effects of comments on subse-
quent comment writers and readers. Scholars, journalists, and politicians have raised
6 R E A D E R COMME NT I NG

concerns that user comments could adversely influence readers’ thoughts and feelings
toward news media organizations, other individuals or social groups, and toward
political issues. Various studies have therefore investigated the effects of disagreement,
incivility, and argument quality in comment sections on readers’ cognitions, affects,
and behaviors. Mostly using experimental designs, research has shown that uncivil
and ill-founded comments negatively affect readers’ perceived journalistic quality of
a corresponding news article (Prochazka, Weber, & Schweiger, 2016). Disagreeing
comments that contain relevant arguments can further decrease the persuasiveness of
a related article. Regarding uncivil comments, research has demonstrated that these
comments polarize readers’ attitudes toward issues, increase their aggressive thoughts
and negative emotions, and promote stereotypical attitudes toward social groups.
Comment-induced negative cognitions and emotions can then increase the level of
incivility in readers’ own comments (Ziegele et al., 2017). Research has also shown that
readers align their perceptions of public opinion toward a social issue to the stance
predominantly voiced in other users’ comments, and that readers can fall silent when
the majority of commenters seemingly contradicts their own stance. In the long run,
uncivil discussions can prevent users from engaging in comment sections. Therefore,
empirical research has also started to investigate strategies that aim at countering
the effects of harmful comments. For example, studies have shown that interactive
journalistic moderation of comments—such as answering questions or asking users to
discuss more respectfully—can counter the negative effects of incivility and increase
participation rates (e.g., Ziegele & Jost, 2016).
This overview already suggests that there are various future challenges regarding
reader commenting. With the increasing volume and the deficient quality of comments
being ever-recurring concerns, these challenges include the questions of how to
“civilize” comment sections, how to support journalists in managing comments, and
how to increase the “value” of readers’ contributions. Developers and scholars are
working on software that can support moderators in automatically identifying “toxic”
and “valuable” comments. Other research develops automated methods that provide
a more comprehensive picture of the arguments and topics in online discussions by
aggregating or clustering comments. Additionally, there is a need for new theoretical
approaches that go beyond the demanding quality criteria of deliberation. Recent con-
ceptualizations of comments as “everyday conversations” take a step forward here and
can help developing realistic expectations toward the quality of reader commenting.
Various other challenges can be identified for each of the described areas of research
on reader commenting. With the increasing public discourse about hate speech and
incivility, journalism studies could profit from investigating the effects of uncivil or
hateful comments on the well-being of journalists and community managers more
closely. Audience research on comments could, in turn, theorize about and assess the
effects of civil, rational, and positive comments in more detail. The validity of content
analyses of the quality of comments will increase if research develops standardized
measures of quality indicators and invests in gathering comprehensive samples of
user comments across different news outlets. Future research could also profit from
considering interdisciplinary conceptions of “community building” to learn about the
processes that shape homogeneity or heterogeneity among users and the degree of
 R E A D E R COMME NT I NG 7

respectfulness of their communication. Finally, comparative studies of commenting

cultures are still scarce but highly relevant, since commenting behavior, moderation,
and outcomes of reading and writing comments are highly culture-dependent in terms
of different understandings of freedom of speech, different journalistic cultures, and
varying degrees of technological affinity and privacy concerns among Internet users.

SEE ALSO: Audience Engagement; Citizen Journalism; Community Engagement and

Social Media Editors; Interactive Journalism; Letters to the Editor; User-Generated
Content

References

Coe, K., Kenski, K., & Rains, S. A. (2014). Online and uncivil? Patterns and determinants of
incivility in newspaper website comments. Journal of Communication, 64(4), 658–679.
Kalogeropoulos, A., Negredo, S., Picone, I., & Nielsen, R. K. (2017). Who shares and comments
on news? A cross-national comparative analysis of online and social media participation.
Social Media + Society, 3(4), 1–12.
Ksiazek, T. B. (2018). Commenting on the news. Journalism Studies, 19(5), 650–673.
Larsson, A. O. (2018). Assessing “the regulars”—and beyond. Journalism Practice, 12(5),
605–623.
McCluskey, M., & Hmielowski, J. (2012). Opinion expression during social conflict: Comparing
online reader comments and letters to the editor. Journalism, 13(3), 303–319.
Newman, N. (with Fletcher, R., Levy, D. A. L., & Nielsen, R. K.). (2016). Reuters Institute digital
news report 2016. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford.
Prochazka, F., Weber, P., & Schweiger, W. (2016). Effects of civility and reasoning in user com-
ments on perceived journalistic quality. Journalism Studies, 19(1), 62–78.
Reich, Z. (2011). User comments: The transformation of participatory space. In J. B. Singer, A.
Hermida, D. Domingo, A. Heinonen, S. Paulussen, T. Quandt, … M. Vujnovic (Eds.), Par-
ticipatory journalism: Guarding open gates at online newspapers (pp. 96–117). Malden, MA:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Robinson, S. (2010). Traditionalists vs. convergers. Convergence, 16(1), 125–143.
Rowe, I. (2015). Deliberation 2.0: Comparing the deliberative quality of online news user com-
ments across platforms. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59(4), 539–555.
Ruiz, C., Domingo, D., Micó, J. L., Díaz-Noci, J., Meso, K., & Masip, P. (2011). Public sphere 2.0?
The democratic qualities of citizen debates in online newspapers. The International Journal of
Press/Politics, 16(4), 463–487.
Springer, N., Engelmann, I., & Pfaffinger, C. (2015). User comments: Motives and inhibitors to
write and read. Information, Communication & Society, 18(7), 798–815.
Stroud, N. J., Scacco, J. M., & Curry, A. L. (2016). The presence and use of interactive features on
news websites. Digital Journalism, 4(3), 339–358.
Ziegele, M., & Jost, P. B. (2016). Not funny? The effects of factual versus sarcastic journalistic
responses to uncivil user comments. Communication Research. Advance online publication.
doi:10.1177/0093650216671854
Ziegele, M., Weber, M., Quiring, O., & Breiner, T. (2017). The dynamics of online news dis-
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participate, and the civility of their contributions. Information, Communication & Society, 7,
1–17.
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Further reading

Singer, J. B., Hermida, A., Domingo, D., Heinonen, A., Paulussen, S., Quandt, T., … Vujnovic,
M. (Eds.). (2011). Participatory journalism: Guarding open gates at online newspapers. Malden,
MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Weber, P. (2014). Discussions in the comments section: Factors influencing participation and
interactivity in online newspapers’ reader comments. New Media & Society, 16(6), 941–957.
Ziegele, M., Springer, N., Jost, P. B., & Wright, S. (2017). Online user comments across news and
other content formats: Multidisciplinary perspectives, new directions. Studies in Communica-
tion and Media, 6(4), 315–332.

Marc Ziegele (PhD, University of Mainz) is an assistant professor at the Department

of Social Sciences at the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf. He is also head of the
project “Deliberative Discussions in the Social Web” funded by the Ministry of Cul-
ture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia. His research on online journalism, online
user discussions, and reader comments has been published in international journals,
such as the Journal of Communication and Communication Research. Recent publica-
tions include a guest-edited special issue of Studies in Communication and Media on
the management, quality, and effects of reader comments.