What does the crowd think? How online comments and popularity metrics affect news credibility and issue importance

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 3068-3083 ◽  
Author(s):  
T Franklin Waddell
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Indirect Pathway ◽  
Negative Number ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Online Comments ◽  
News Credibility ◽  
Reader Comments ◽  
Construct Accessibility ◽  
Main Model ◽  
Issue Importance

Online comments hold the potential to promote positive deliberative outcomes, although past work has also shown that comments can have undesired effects when the sentiment of the crowd turns negative. Does the presence of comments possibly bolster or interfere with the reception and traditional functions of news media? Informed by the Modality-Agency-Interactivity-Navigability (MAIN) model, an online experiment tested the effect of reader comments (positive vs negative), number of “re-tweets” and “likes” (low vs high), and coverage frequency (infrequent vs frequent) on news credibility and issue importance. Negative reader comments (relative to positive comments) decreased message credibility and issue importance through the sequential indirect pathway of bandwagon perceptions, attention, and construct accessibility. Study results suggest that the traditional functions of news media may be hindered by audience incivility.

scholarly journals Claiming Credibility in Online Comments: Popular Debate Surrounding the COVID-19 Vaccine

Publications ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Ruth Breeze
Keyword(s):  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Internet Age ◽  
Online Comments ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
Reader Comments ◽  
Public Demand

At times of crisis, access to information takes on special importance, and in the Internet age of constant connectedness, this is truer than ever. Over the course of the pandemic, the huge public demand for constantly updated health information has been met with a massive response from official and scientific sources, as well as from the mainstream media. However, it has also generated a vast stream of user-generated digital postings. Such phenomena are often regarded as unhelpful or even dangerous since they unwittingly spread misinformation or make it easier for potentially harmful disinformation to circulate. However, little is known about the dynamics of such forums or how scientific issues are represented there. To address this knowledge gap, this chapter uses a corpus-assisted discourse approach to examine how “expert” knowledge and other sources of authority are represented and contested in a corpus of 10,880 reader comments responding to Mail Online articles on the development of the COVID-19 vaccine in February–July 2020. The results show how “expert” knowledge is increasingly problematized and politicized, while other strategies are used to claim authority. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of sociological theories, and some tentative solutions are proposed.

scholarly journals Social Studies Teacher Perceptions of News Source Credibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 262-272
Author(s):  
Christopher H. Clark ◽  
Mardi Schmeichel ◽  
H. James Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Teacher Perceptions ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Social Studies Teachers ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Secondary Social Studies ◽  
News Source ◽  
News Credibility

Politically tumultuous times have created a problematic space for teachers who include the news in their classrooms. Few studies have explored perceptions of news credibility among secondary social studies teachers, the educators most likely to regularly incorporate news media into their classrooms. We investigated teachers’ operational definitions of credibility and the relationships between political ideology and assessments of news source credibility. Most teachers in this study used either static or dynamic definitions to describe news media sources’ credibility. Further, teachers’ conceptualizations of credibility and perceived ideological differences with news sources were associated with how credible teachers found each source. These results indicate potential inconsistencies in how news credibility is defined and possible political bias in which sources social studies teachers use as exemplars of credibility.

scholarly journals Can an Algorithm Reduce the Perceived Bias of News? Testing the Effect of Machine Attribution on News Readers’ Evaluations of Bias, Anthropomorphism, and Credibility

2019 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Franklin Waddell
Keyword(s):  
Media Bias ◽  
Online Experiment ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
News Credibility ◽  
Similarity Attraction ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
News Writing ◽  
Principle Of Similarity ◽  
Main Model

Although accusations of editorial slant are ubiquitous to the contemporary media environment, recent advances in journalism such as news writing algorithms may hold the potential to reduce readers’ perceptions of media bias. Informed by the Modality-Agency-Interactivity-Navigability (MAIN) model and the principle of similarity attraction, an online experiment ( n = 612) was conducted to test if news attributed to an automated author is perceived as less biased and more credible than news attributed to a human author. Results reveal that perceptions of bias are attenuated when news is attributed to a journalist and algorithm in tandem, with positive downstream consequences for perceived news credibility.

scholarly journals Populist online communication: Interactions among politicians, journalists, and citizens (Dissertation summary)

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sina Blassnig
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Online News ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Multimethod Approach ◽  
Reader Comments ◽  
Western Democracies

The recent rise of populist politicians in Western democracies is often associated with their allegedly successful use of digital media. However, for a long time, there has been little research specifically on populist online communication. To address this substantial research gap, the thesis pursues two major research aims: First, it investigates drivers of populist communication in politicians’ online self-presentation and online news media representation. Second, the thesis examines the effects of populist online communication on citizens’ behavior in the form of user reactions to politicians’ social media posts and reader comments on online news articles. Based on five internationally comparative studies and the overarching synopsis, the cumulative thesis demonstrates that populist online communication is driven by the reciprocal interactions among politicians, journalists, and citizens and is influenced by various factors on the macro, meso, and micro level. Furthermore, it shows that populist online communication resonates with citizens and is multiplied by them – specifically by citizens with prior strong populist attitudes. By analyzing the interactions of three key actor groups – politicians, journalists, and citizens – and by following a multimethod approach the dissertation connects research on both the supply and demand side of populism.

Presence of online reader comments lowers news site credibility

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey Conlin ◽  
Chris Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Online News ◽  
News Credibility ◽  
News Outlet ◽  
Reader Comments ◽  
The Way

The authors raise questions about the effects of reader comments on online news credibility, and among their findings is that the same feature—readers’ comments—that makes online news more appealing also decreases the credibility of the news outlet. The commenting system and the way comments are moderated do not appear to affect a news outlet’s credibility.

Poisoning the information well?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edson C. Tandoc Jr. ◽  
Andrew Duffy ◽  
S Mo Jones-Jang ◽  
Winnie Goh Wen Pin
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Media Study ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Credibility ◽  
News Credibility ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Trust Information

Abstract This study examines the impact of fake news discourse on perceptions of news media credibility. If participants are told they have been exposed to fake news, does this lead them to trust information institutions less, including the news media? Study 1 (n = 188) found that news media credibility decreased when participants were told they saw fake news, while news credibility did not change when participants were told they saw real news. Study 2 (n = 400) found that those who saw fake news – and were told they saw a fake news post – decreased their trust in the news media while those who saw fake news and were not debriefed did not change their perceptions of the news media. This shows that the social impact of fake news is not limited to its direct consequences of misinforming individuals, but also includes the potentially adverse effects of discussing fake news.

The mediating impact of coping style on stress perception for parents of individuals with intellectual disabilities

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin W. Peer ◽  
Stephen B. Hillman
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Coping Style ◽  
Indirect Pathway ◽  
Pathway Model ◽  
Stress Perception ◽  
Study Results ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities

Research reveals that parents of individuals with intellectual disabilities experience more stress than parents of persons of normal development. The majority of previous research has measured direct relationships between stress variables and stress perception and little attention has been given to the impact of mediating variables. The present study utilized an indirect pathway model to examine the mediating influence of coping style on the relationship between social support, severity of child disability, parental optimism and stress perception for these parents. Parents of individuals receiving mental health services through an agency in Southeastern Michigan participated in the study. Results indicated that coping style partially mediated the relationship between social support and stress perception for parents of individuals with intellectual disabilities.

scholarly journals How Do Online News Genres Take Up Knowledge Claims From a Scientific Research Article on Climate Change?

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Bray
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
News Media ◽  
Online News ◽  
News Report ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change ◽  
One Year ◽  
Knowledge Claims

The Internet has helped to change who writes about science in the news, how news is written, and how it is taken up by different audiences. However, few studies have examined how these changes have impacted the uptake of scientific claims in online news writing. This case study explores how online news genres take up knowledge claims from a research article on climate change over a period of one year and shows how shifting boundaries between rhetorical communities affect genre uptake. The study results show that online news writers predominantly use the news report genre to cover research findings for 48 hours, after which they predominantly use the news editorial genre to engage these findings. Analysis suggests that the news report genre uses the press release and the article abstract as intermediary genres, but the news editorial uses only the abstract. I argue that the switch between genres repositions the scientist, the journalist, and the public epistemologically, a reorientation that favors uptake in news media outlets supporting action to mitigate climate change and its effects.

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