Why Chileans comment and Germans do not:
Exploring the driving forces of online news participation
MASTER THESIS by
Anna Jopp (11896698)
Joint “Erasmus Mundus” MA in Journalism, Media and Globalisation (Aarhus University, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, University of Amsterdam)
University of Amsterdam – Graduate School of Communication
Supervisor: Michael Hameleers Date of submission: June 1, 2018
Abstract
News consumers in different countries differ significantly with regard to how often they comment and read existing comments on online news items. Surveying 278 online news users in Chile and Germany as two countries with exceptionally high (Chile) and low (Germany) online news participation numbers, the study analyses why some people comment and others do not. It focuses on differences in motives regarding comments on news websites and news posts on social media as well as on the uses and gratifications and individual factors that more generally drive commenting frequency. Identifying mobile device use and a desire to directly interact with the journalist or author as major influencing factors of commenting probability, the results suggest that Chileans comment more frequently online because they do not trust the offline media in their country.
Keywords: user-generated content; user comments; uses and gratifications; online survey; Germany; Chile
Table of contents
Introduction ... 4
Theoretical background ... 6
User generated content and online comments ... 6
Uses and gratifications in online news commenting ... 8
Commenting U&G: Differences across platforms ... 8
Commenting U&G: Differences between Chile and Germany ... 10
Towards a model of predicting online commenting frequency ... 10
Methods ... 14
Data collection ... 14
Measures ... 15
Results ... 18
Uses and gratifications: Differences across platforms ... 18
Uses and gratifications: Differences between countries ... 19
Individual factors ... 21
Device use ... 21
Education ... 22
Political engagement ... 23
Media trust and overall model ... 23
Revisiting the U&G dimensional structure for commenting behavior... 26
Discussion ... 27
Introduction
User-generated comments have fundamentally changed the way in which audiences and journalists interact. Allowing for both real-time intra-audience debates as well as for direct conversation between the author and the public, they are blurring the lines between private and mass communication (e.g., Lee & Tandoc, 2017).
According to a recent eye-tracking study (Steinfeld, Samuel-Azran, & Lev-On, 2016), the average online news reader spends more time reading user comments than reading a paragraph of the news article itself. Comments affect readers’ opinion on the news topic (e.g., Lee & Jang, 2010), cause them to misjudge public opinion on the issue (Lee, 2012) and mayregardless of whether the comments are positive or negative (Ash, Hettinga, & Halpern, 2009)lower readers’ evaluation of the news item’s quality (Metzger, 2007; Prochazka, Weber, & Schweiger, 2018).
Most importantly, from a normative perspective, online comments contribute what Dahlberg (2011), expanding on Habermas (2006), called “deliberative digital democracy” (p. 859). According to this viewpoint, comment sections serve as a public sphere where citizens can utter and form rational opinions without any major entrance thresholds. Connecting people whobe it through geographical or social distancewould never exchange opinions in the offline world, the internet allows citizens to exchange their thoughts in previously
unthinkable ways (e.g., Benkler, 2006).
However, not everywhere in the world do citizens make equal use of these opportunities. The results of the 2017 “Digital News Report” (Newman, Fletcher,
Kalogeropoulos, Levy, & Nielsen, 2017), an annual survey issued by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, suggest that users from Latin American countries comment on online news items far more frequently than those from the United States and Western Europe, where most existing research on online comments and their effects had been concentrated (Steinfeld et al. , 2016). In 2014 already, Nielsen & Schrøder had thus called for “additional
cross-country comparative analysis” (p. 486) into the topic of online participation, a gap the study at hand intends to address.
Drawing on the uses and gratifications framework and considering potential
individual-level influencing factors, this paper aims to expand our knowledge on why people comment online. A survey with news readers in Chile as the country with the largest amount of weekly comments per person and in Germany, according to Kalogeropoulos, Negredo, Picone and Nielsen (2017) “the clearest outlier” (p. 2) in terms of online commenting and sharing behaviour, shall shed light on the curious international differences in news interaction.
This study aims to expand existing research by asking for commenting motives in a Latin American country. This has at least two major advantages. First of all, as Hoelig (2016) emphasizes, “different countries do not necessarily have the same patterns and are not
developing identically with respect to media usage” (p. 394). By adding a completely new cultural area to the corpus of existing research, the study intends to shed light on influencing factors of online participation not previously focused on.
Secondly, potential national or cultural influences left aside, the comparison of Chile and Germany focuses on two countries with a previously unseen difference in commenting proportions. Presumably, this will allow for a more precise isolation of the general factors driving online participation than was possible in previous comparisons of, for example, Western and Southern European countries (Hoelig, 2016) or European countries and the United States (Kalogeropoulos et al., 2017).
Overall, the study contributes to the existing literature by (1) investigating in how far online participation uses and gratifications differ for comments on online news websites as compared to comments on news posts on social media, by (2) analysing in how far news users from Chile and Germany differ in terms of the uses and gratifications they seek when
commenting on online news and by (3) determining which individual factors affect both this relationship between uses and gratifications and commenting behaviour as such.
The research identifies current obstacles and incentives in online news participation, thereby shedding light on how to increase audience participation and foster a free and pluralistic exchange of opinions in online news coverage.
Theoretical background User generated content and online comments
Comments on news items form part of the larger phenomenon of user generated content (UGC), meaning the wealth of unpaid videos, forum posts, product reviews and encyclopedia entries making up a large part of the internet today. UGC is an essential part of what distinguishes the modern media from previous information spaces (e.g., Van Dijck, 2009). While the bulk of television, radio and printed newspaper content continues to be created by journalists and advertisers, UGC has been seen by many as a democratizing shift in content creation (e.g., Daugherty, Eastin, & Bright, 2008). Users are now co-creators of media content visible to fellow citizens in many-to-many communication.
Even though most of this content is not directly connected to online news, as Gil De Zúñiga, Jung, & Valenzuela (2012) argue, “there is no reason to think that people who are motivated to follow public affairs will not use [the internet] to use, contribute and share information that is public-oriented in nature” (p. 321). Since UGC is usually displayed directly next to or underneath the news content, both the potential author- and the readership on the websites of mass media outlets are thus theoretically identical with the large audience of the news content itself (Springer, Engelmann, & Pfaffinger, 2015). For media
professionals, this means increased competition, but also increased feedback to their daily work.
But who are the users who create all this content online? Hargittai and Walejko (2008) found that, contrary to the ideal of a digital public sphere offering means of expression to everyone, socio-economic status is in fact a clear predictor for content creation. Also, they
note that what they call “online abilities” (p. 253), i.e. an individual’s skill in using the internet, were decisive in whether that individual chose to create content.
Some online news outlets (e.g., Reuters.com, the Canadian Sun chain, and German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung) have recently decided to remove comment sections from their websites and scholars have started to bury the notion of participatory journalism altogether (e.g., Almgren & Olsson, 2016; Karlsson, Bergström, Clerwall, & Fast, 2015). Nevertheless, interactive elements in news content appear to be here to stay: Almost all modern online news outlets now encourage their users to post photos and videos online, comment, share or “like” the news (Bergström, 2011; Singer & Ashman, 2009) in some way or another.
Individuals who comment on news websites are most likely to be middle-aged, male and well educated (Almgren & Olsson, 2016). Research also shows that articles that contain elements such as proximity, power, or controversy tend to trigger more comments than items without these factors (Weber, 2013). In return, comments that are particularly controversial or unexpected then tend to receive many replies, while long, purely negative or even
incomprehensible comments curb further debate (Ziegele, Breiner, & Quiring, 2014). The decision to comment thus appears to depend both on the news item itself and on the tone, content and properties of the existing UGC. Especially the frequently cited
“incivility” of comment sections (Anderson, Brossard, Scheufele, Xenos, & Ladwig, 2014; Hughey & Daniels, 2013; Prochazka et al., 2018) as well as the properties of comments that initiate further discussion (Ziegele et al., 2014) have received expansive scholarly attention in this regard. The thesis at hand, however, looks beyond the news items’ content and instead focuses on the “user” side of UGC, exploring the motives that generally cause people to comment or not to comment.
After all, the fact that some people comment on a news item that fulfills the above news factors while others do not relate to these factors indicates that content alone cannot predict whether a user will comment or read existing comments. Instead, individual motives
and expectations, the so-called uses and gratifications (U&G; Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973), are likely to govern this decision. These personal driving forces and how they affect online commenting behaviour shall be explored in the following section.
Uses and gratifications in online news commenting
The larger mass communication field of uses and gratifications research (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973) describes the social and psychological needs fulfilled by media consumption. The general assumption is that news consumers actively seek out media for a specific reason, e.g. to be entertained or informed. Uses and gratification research has thus traditionally focused both on identifying and making measurable the specific dimensions satisfied by different types of media as well as the individual factors moderating these needs. But how do these needs differ across platforms?
Commenting U&G: Differences across platforms
As pointed out by Sundar and Limperos (2013), the advent of social media turned this notion of the “active audience” around. This means that internet users now literally inter-act with the media they consume. Several studies investigating the U&G related to consuming “new” media (starting with Mings (1997) and more recently adapted to Web 2.0 (e.g.,
Haridakis & Hanson, 2009; Wang, 2014) have thus concluded that, while people still seek the same individual rewards, such as distraction or information, new technological possibilities have added social needs like the urge for interaction with others to the list of gratifications sought.
For online news comments in particular, Ash et al. (2009) report that a “sense of community” (p. 6), experienced by engaging in online discussion, fosters positive feelings towards the news outlets. That is congruent with the findings of Shao (2009) who argued that, apart from what he calls “[u]ser-to-content-interaction” (p. 12), i.e. commenting on news
content, the desire for “[u]ser-to-user interaction” (p.12) can be an additional driving force behind online participation.
However, this appears to be more accurate on social media than on news websites themselves. After all, as Hille and Bakker (2013) point out, “media sites and blogs are ‘public’ places. Facebook is a place for friends, where news is no more than a byproduct” (p. 664). The personal social network thus being at the heart of the social media experience, it is likely that people who comment on these websites are fully aware that people they know in the offline world will be able to read and reply to their comments. Also, most of these services operate with a “clear-name” policy or include photographs, making the commenter clearly identifiable even to strangers.
Website comments, while also visible to the public, may often still be published using a pseudonym. It is also less likely to encounter and recognize the same fellow users, let alone real-life acquaintances on a regular basis. To these commenters, posting might thus rather be a means to seek conversation with the journalist (since they are more likely to actually reach the author by commenting on the website than on one of many posts and shares on social media) or a general enjoyment in having their opinion read and published.
While a refined conceptualization of the difference in commenting motives across platforms is lacking to date, Michailina, Masouras and Papademetriou (2015) showed that different motives may indeed be salient for different types of online media. Comparing news reading U&G on news websites and social media in general, they found that social media users were overall more likely to seek entertainment, a desire the authors described as encouraged by the very purpose and structure of social networks.
Following the above considerations, it can thus be expected that (H1a) for commenters on social media, user-to-user interactivity will be more important than for commenters on news websites who (H1b) will instead be more likely to cite personal identity and (H1c) user-to-journalist interaction motives as their reasons for commenting.
Also, (H2a) social integrative and (H2b) entertainment motives of comment reading will be more important for those reading comments on social media.
Commenting U&G: Differences between Chile and Germany
Studying U&G in the context of social media use in the United States and South Korea, Kim, Sohn, and Choi (2011) documented a clear impact of individualist vs. collectivist societal norms on the media-related U&G sought by individuals from either country.
Specifically, the generally more individualist Americans regarded Facebook as a tool for entertainment and to build a loose network of acquaintances. Korean collectivism meant that users preferred using the site for what the authors call the “exchange of social support via existing social relationships” (p. 371). Transferring these results to collectivist Chile and comparatively individualist Germany (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010), it can be expected that (H3a) Chilean online news consumers will stress user-to-user interactivity while (H3b) German commenters will favor personal identity motives. For comment reading, (H4a) Chileans will likely favour the social-integrative dimensions and (H4b) Germans will agree more strongly with the entertainment dimension.
Towards a model of predicting online commenting frequency
The “Digital News Report” shows that Chilean online news consumers are far more likely to comment in an average week than their German counterparts (Newman et al., 2017). Even when assuming that users from different cultural backgrounds differ in their
commenting motives as described above, it is probable that these differences alone will not suffice to explain the vast discrepancy in commenting frequency between one of the most and one of the least news-participation-enthusiastic countries in the world.
In fact, little research has so far focused on individual-level attributes that might govern online participation. As depicted in Figure 1, the following section aims to treat the
motives mentioned above as only one piece of a larger jigsaw, namely as mediating variables likely to explain why Chileans comment more. Focusing on likely elements of a more
comprehensive model, it explores which factors may or may not affect whether or not a news consumer decides to comment.
Device use
With the highest GDP in the region and a global place 38 on the annual “Human Development Index” (United Nations Development Program, 2016), Chileans have long embraced the opportunities offered by the new media: According to a 2016 “IMS Internet Media Services” survey, 71 % of Chileans accessed the internet at least once a month, a proportion far above the Latin American average of 56.1%. On average, the same report found they spent five hours daily online. Nevertheless, the penetration numbers hardly compare to Germany, where the overall proportion of internet users was 89.3% in 2017 (ARD/ZDF-Medienkommission, 2018). Dependent variable Self-reported commenting frequency Education Independent variable Nationality
Figure 1. Hypothesized model of the relationship between nationality and commenting frequency
Uses and gratifications Trust in the traditional media
Political engagement
Device use
Moderating variables Mediating variables
A previous study by Hoelig (2016), comparing commenting behaviour in Western and. Southern European countries found that commenting was significantly more prevalent in states with lower internet penetration. However, this observation does not explain why Chile, in the 2017 version of the “Digital News Report,” scored higher in online participation than many other countries with worse internet access.
More promisingly, the same “IMS” study found that 93% of Chilean internet users use mobile devices when accessing the internet, as compared to only 64% of Germans (Initiative D21, 2018). Given that mobile devices and especially news apps provide a faster and more convenient out-of-house access to online content, this observation could be at least part of the explanation for the large difference in commenting frequency. It shall thus be predicted that (H5a) Chileans will be more likely to use mobile devices when commenting on online news and that (H5b) this device use will moderate and weaken the link between nationality and commenting frequency, mobile users commenting more regardless of where they are from.
Online ability and educational level
As outlined above, online ability and educational level have been found to be predictive of UGC creation in general. Since research on the so-called “digital divide” suggests that higher online skills are consistently connected to a higher educational level (Correa, 2016; van Deursen & van Dijk, 2009), both of these determinants shall be grouped together here.
Van Dijk (2005) observed that people with an undergraduate degree or higher tended to use the internet significantly more for informational and educational purposes and
significantly less for pure entertainment. He predicted that this development could ultimately lead to a “usage gap” (p. 129) between those who benefit from the opportunities of the internet and those who do not. According to Correa (2016), this effect is stable even when controlled for online ability, which is why only education shall be included in the final model.
Since news reading and commenting are instances of active and “informational” internet use, it is likely, that, regardless of their country of origin, (H6a) respondents with a university degree will be more likely to comment. Overall, (H6b) educational level will thus moderate the relationship between nationality and commenting, the effect between the two being weaker for those with higher education.
Political engagement
Following the ideal of the internet as a democracy-empowering tool, scholars have suggested that the increased and simplified opportunities for political expression online might foster future offline action and encourage those not previously active to become engaged both at and away from the keyboard (e. g. Gil de Zúñiga, Molyneux, & Zheng (2014). However, the forms of engagement differ between online and offline participation (e.g., Oser, Hooghe, & Marien, 2013), many voices criticizing online engagement as so-called “slacktivism,” an easy click or “like” replacing actually meaningful participation.
According to Chung (2008), more politically engaged internet users tend to make increased used of so-called “human interactive features” (p. 678) of which comment sections form a part. Though this direction of the link between offline and online participation has been less explored, it seems reasonable to assume that those who are active offline do not cease being so when they turn on their computer or mobile device. Either way, it is therefore likely that (H7a) more politically engaged people will be more probable to comment and that (H7b) this will indirectly explain the relationship between nationality and commenting.
Media trust
“[P]eople will expose themselves to news information they trust” (Tsfati & Cappella, 2003, p. 508). Following this rule of thumb and applying it to the interactive world of new
media, it is likely that respondents in both Germany and Chile will consume and interact only with those media types and outlets they have at least some confidence in.
On a national level, this assumption is supported by Hoelig (2016), who, when comparing trust in the traditional media and online participation, found that in countries where trust was lower, online participation tended to be higher. On an individual level, Fletcher and Park (2017) stress that those with lower trust in the media are more likely to participate in online news coverage, but also to prefer non-mainstream news channels.
Overall, it can be assumed that (H8a) respondents with low trust in the media in general and (H8b) especially those with low trust in the traditional, offline media will be more likely to comment online. This assumption is supported by findings in the area of hostile media
perceptions research, authors in the field arguing that “the perception of hostile media bias ignites negative emotional responses, resulting in behavioral tendencies to overcome or correct the bias” (Choi, Park, & Chang, 2011, p. 26).
Since the Latin American media in general is characterized by a high degree of political parallelism and the concentration of media ownership is higher in Chile than in any other country in the region (e.g., Mellado & Lagos, 2014), (H8c) trust in the traditional media will therefore act as a mediator between nationality and commenting behaviour in the overall model explaining commenting frequency.
Methods Data collection
The study employed a cross-sectional survey design to assess online news commenting frequency and U&G of a sample of online news consumers in Chile and Germany. In order to assess online news consumers’ motivations for commenting (and especially for not commenting, since this decision does not usually leave any traces), asking them directly appears to be the only feasible approach (Springer et al., 2015). To measure and
compare the U&G sought through online commenting in Chile and Germany, a web-based survey was thus employed. Considering that the study specifically aimed at investigating online behaviour, excluding non-internet-users from the potential respondents was considered unproblematic.
A German- and a Spanish-language version of the survey were posted online parallelly for ten days in April of 2018. The study consisted of a self-administered questionnaire that asked respondents about basic demographical data, their online media consumption habits, self-assessed political engagement and media trust as well as for their motives to comment on, read comments on or not participate in online news coverage on news websites and social media.
German and Chilean participants were recruited via public postings on the social network Facebook and subsequent snowball sampling. To overcome some of the limitations of this sampling technique, personal invitations to respond to and share the survey link were extended to non-Facebook users of various age groups and educational backgrounds and Facebook users were encouraged to share the link with others outside of social media.
The final collected sample size was 160 for the German and 178 for the Chilean sample. Out of these, exactly 139 Chilean responses (79 women, 58 men, 2 other; age M = 33.50, SD = 10.99) and 139 German responses (95 women, 40 men, 4 other; age M = 32.01, SD = 13.66) were valid and complete and thus included into the analysis. 15.8% of Chilean and 36.7% of German participants had not (yet) obtained any university degree, 62.6% of Chileans and 43.2% of Germans had obtained a first university degree and 21.6% of Chileans and 20.1% of Germans held a higher academic degree.
Measures
Demographics: The questionnaire began with a filter question asking for the
from answering the rest of the survey. German nationals filling in the Spanish questionnaire and Chileans filling in the German version were re-directed to the appropriate-language form at this point. Other demographical questions then recorded the age, gender, educational level in categories similar or equal in both countries and current country of residence of the respondent.
Online news consumption: Since the survey was aimed at online news consumers, respondents were asked to indicate how often they used the internet to follow news from their country on a five-point scale, ranging from “never” to “very frequently” (the complete scales for all questions can be found in the appendix to this paper). Participants claiming they “never” consumed online news were then excluded from the survey (for the remaining respondents: M = 4.04, SD = .95).
Political engagement and interest: Political engagement (M = 3.46, SD = 1.83) and interest (M = 5.34, SD = 1.64) were both recorded using single-item measures, asking
respondents to self-assess how politically engaged and interested they considered themselves to be on a 7-point scale ranging from “not active / interested at all” to “very active /
interested.”
Online ability: Similarly, a participant’s self-assessed online ability was recorded by asking “How competent or experienced do you feel in using the internet?”, offering a 7-point answer scale of “not at all competent / experienced” to “very competent / experienced” (M = 4.47, SD = 2.04).
Media trust: Building on Tsfati and Cappella (2003), in order to measure trust in the news media, a single composite scale was calculated from five individual 5-point Likert-scored items, asking respondents to indicate how much they agreed that the media in their home country are fair, balanced, unbiased, truthful and paint an accurate picture of society (M = 2.54, SD = .94, Cronbach’s α = .83).
To assess in more detail whether this trust or distrust extends to certain types of media more than to others, a second composite scale consisting of seven individual items then asked them to rate the extent to which they thought that news obtained from different online and offline media sources in their country were trustworthy on a 5-point scale, ranging from “not trustworthy at all” to “very trustworthy.” Alternatively, they could also indicate that they did not receive news from that news source, which was coded as “0” and subsequently excluded from the analysis. Cronbach’s alpha for the overall scale was = .67 (M = 3.12, SD = .66).
Online participation: In a screening question, the questionnaire measured each
subject’s online news use by asking how often (never – once a week – several times a week – daily – several times daily) people commented or read comments on news websites or news posts on social media in an average week. It also recorded how often subjects “liked” or “upvoted” news items or publicly or privately shared them with others.
Based on the answers to this question, participants were then presented only with those sets of survey items pertaining to their actual participation patterns (i.e. the items where they had chosen an option different than “never”), namely with a choice or combination of why they commented on social media, commented on news websites, read comments on either of those platforms, or did not comment at all. To analyse how exactly they accessed and
participated in news coverage, respondents were also asked to select from a multiple choice list the type of device they used when participating in each of the above activities.
Online commenting uses and gratifications: In order to measure the U&G involved in online commenting, comment reading and non-participating on both news websites and news posts on social media, a battery of 32 5-point-Likert-scored survey items for commenters, comment readers and non-participants was adopted from Springer et al. (2015).
These items can be regarded as valid measures of U&G because they account for both traditional media U&G as well as for the newer, more interactive motives. To simplify
analysis, they categorize the individual answers into larger factors, namely cognitive, user-to-user-interactivity, user-to-journalist interactivity and so-called personal identity motives.
To keep the questionnaire from being too long and repetitive when answered for several different types of participation, only the three best performing items per
“commenting” and “reading comments” category were adopted from Springer et al. (2015). Given the critical state of press freedom in both Eastern Germany and Chile during the second half of the 20th century, an additional item about commenting due to not having been able to openly express one’s opinion before was then added to the “personal identity” category.
To account for motives not covered in this shortened measure, respondents were offered an optional open answer field to list reasons for commenting or comment-reading they felt had not been addressed in the questionnaire.
Considering that respondents who said they neither read nor wrote comments would only have to answer one block of questions, Springer et al.’s (2015) measure was kept intact for this category. In addition, two survey items (“I do not think others care for my opinion” and “I do not think others would read my comments”) were added to the existing statements. Ultimately, the commenting motives subscale thus combined 13 individual items (M = 3.06, SD = .68, Cronbach’s α = .81), the comment reading subscale consisted of nine items (M = 2.80, SD = .64, Cronbach’s α = .72), and the non-commenting inhibitors subscale of ten items (M = 2.90, SD = .67, Cronbach’s α = .77).
Results Uses and gratifications: Differences across platforms
Hypotheses H1 and H2 predicted that commenters on social media would prefer to-user motives, while those on news websites would hold stronger personal identity and user-to-journalist interactivity motives. An independent samples t-test compared the U&G
Specifically, website commenters were more likely to agree with cognitive motives (M = 2.58, SD = 0.86) than commenters on social media (M = 2.10, SD = 0.78; t(88) = -2.81, p = .01, d = 0.60).
Comment readers on social media held stronger social integrative motives (M = 2.24, SD = 0.82 vs. M = 1.74, SD = 0.66; t(213) = -1.70, p = .01). They were also more likely to favour entertainment motives (social media readers: M = 3.03, SD = 1.03; non-social media: M = 2.44, SD = .85, t(213) = -2.36, p = .02).
Hypotheses H1a to H1c thus need to be rejected: Website commenters in fact differed significantly from those commenting elsewhere only in their cognitive, but not in any of the remaining three commenting dimensions. H2a and H2b,addressing the differing motives of comment readers, however turned out to be correct. Comment readers on social media indeed hold stronger social-integrative and entertainment motives.
Uses and gratifications: Differences between countries
Congruent with the findings of the “Digital News Report” (Newman et al., 2017), Figure 2 shows that Chilean respondents were in every single category of participation significantly more likely to participate in online news coverage, 27.3% claiming they wrote comments on news websites at least once a week (compared to only 7% of Germans) and 54.7% (vs. 16.5% of Germans) regularly commenting on news posts on social media (χ2(5, 278) = 77.00, p<0.0001).
Figure 2. Online participation in Chile vs. Germany
Agreement with the user-to-journalist dimension of commenting U&G was
significantly greater at p<0.05 for social media commenters in Germany (M = 3.81, SD = .74) than in Chile (M = 3.34, SD = 0.94); t(94) = -2.19, p = .03, d = 0.50). Chilean social media commenters, on the other hand, agreed more strongly than Germans (M = 2.50, SD = 1.19, t(83) = 2.11, p = .04, d = 0.46) with the cognitive dimension (M = 3.15, SD = 1.16) than did their German counterparts. The analysis found no significant inter-country differences for the remaining two item dimensions or between Chilean and German commenters on news
websites. H3a and H3b, predicting differences in the user-to-user and personal identity dimensions,can thus not be confirmed.
As displayed in Tables 1a and 1b and assumed in H4a, Chileans more commonly read comments for social-integrative motives. However, readers in both countries were almost equally likely to support the entertainment dimension, thereby contradicting H4b.
7% 17% 63% 63% 43% 22% 45% 27% 55% 92% 96% 78% 73% 60% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Comment on news websites Comment on news posts on social… Read comments on news websites
Read news comments on social… "Like" news content" Publicly share news content Privately share news content
Table 1a. Uses and gratification dimensions for comment readers on news websites in Chile and Germany. “I read comments on news content on news websites / on social media because…” (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree)
Chile (n = 111) Germany (n = 82)
M SD M SD Mean difference p d t(191) Cognitive 3.37 1.12 3.30 .86 .07 .64 0.48 Social integrative 2.44 .89 1.97 .75 .47* .00 .56 3.84 Entertainment 3.07 1.10 2.97 .10 .09 .54 0.61
Table 1b. “I read comments on news content on news websites / on social media because…” (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree)
Chile (n = 112) Germany (n = 87) M SD M SD Mean difference p d t(188) Cognitive 3.21 1.10 3.03 1.01 .18 .26 1.13 Social integrative 2.39 .92 1.95 .82 .44* .00 0.49 3.38 Entertainment 3.05 1.12 3.03 .10 .019 .90 0.12 Individual factors Device use
H5a suggested that Chilean respondents would be more likely to use tablets or
smartphones when interacting with online news. Indeed, out of those who commented on-the-go, 79.7 % were Chilean and only 20.3% were German. Overall, 69.6% of all Chilean
commenters said they (also) used mobile devices, as compared to 56.0% of commenting Germans. This relationship between nationality and device use was significant for both commenting on social media (χ2(4, 278) = 47.49, p< 0.001) and on news websites (χ2(4, 278) = 24,85, 47.49, p< 0.001).
Amongst those who participated in online news coverage, device use did not significantly affect the relation between nationality and commenting frequency, neither on news websites (interaction effect: b = .49, SE = .52, p = .35) nor on news posts on social media (b = -.65, SE = .38, p = .09). H5b can therefore not be supported.
Education
As predicted by H6a, there was a significant association (χ2(1, 278) = 5.48, p = .02) between possession of a university degree and commenting. While 41.5% of university-educated respondents said they commented on either news websites or news posts on social media at least once a week, only 26.0% of lesser educated survey participants claimed the same.
However, as depicted in Table 2, when controlling for the other variables in the overall hypothesized model and treating commenting frequency as ordinal rather than binary,
education did not sufficiently predict commenting.
A simple moderation analysis using the SPSS PROCESS macro (Model 1) showed that the overall effect of Chileans commenting more was not significantly altered when controlling for education (interaction effect: b = -.13, SE = .37, p = .72). H6b was therefore not supported by the data.
Table 2. Ordinal regression predicting drivers of commenting frequency on news websites and on news posts on social media
News websites Social media
Variables B (SE) Wald p 95% CI B (SE) Wald p 95% CI Political activism .02 (.11) .04 .84 [-0.20, .25] .18 (.11) 2.46 .12 [-.04, .41] Traditional media trust -.37 (.21) 3.26 .07 [-0.78, .03] -.74 (.22)*** 11.65 .00 [-1.16, -.31] Education -.68 (.64) 1.15 .28 [-1.94, .57] .19 (.66) .08 .78 [-1.11, 1.49] Mobile device use 1.88 (.54)** 12.07 .00 [.82, 2.93] -.26 (.55) .22 .64 [-1.33, .81] U&G: Cognitive .61 (.25)* 5.79 .02 [.11, 1.11] -.02 (.24) .01 .93 [-.49, .45] U&G: User-to-journalist .18 (.28) .40 .53 [-.38, .74] .90 (.30)** 9.16 .00 [.32, 1.49] U&G: User-to-user -.34 (.29) 1.41 .23 [-.91, .22] -.24 (.29) .70 .40 [-.81, .33]
U&G: Personal identity -.19 (.28) .48 .49 [-.74, .36] .47 (.28) 2.74 .10 [-.09, 1.02] Nagelkerke R2 0.27 0.31 χ2 (df) 27.48 (8)** 30.98 (8)*** *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
Note. N = 278. CI = confidence interval; standard errors reported between brackets.
Political engagement
H7a postulated that respondents who considered themselves generally politically engaged also commented more on online news. An independent-samples t-test showed that commenters (M = 4.00, SD = 1.93) were significantly more politically active than
non-commenters (M = 3.14, SD = 1.67; t(1, 276) = -3.86, p<.001, d = .47). However, when turning this relationship around to directly address the hypothesis, consistent with the findings in Table 3, more politically engaged respondents did not generally comment more: 29.8% of those low in political activism and 33.8% of those highly active said they commented online in an average week (χ2(1,234) = 0,43, p = .51). H7a therefore needs to be rejected.
While Chilean respondents (M = 3.99, SD = 1.91) were in fact more politically engaged than Germans (M = 2.94, SD = 1.60; t(276) = 4.94, p<.001, d = .59), this finding logically rules out the assumption made in H7b. The activism rating cannot affect the direct effect between nationality and commenting if the “b”-path of the indirect effect, connecting mediator and independent variable, is non-existent.
Media trust and overall model
Respondents who trust the traditional media or the media in general less comment more. These assumptions (H8a and H8b) are confirmed by the survey results. 45.3% of those with low trust in the media, but only 26.9% of those with high trust said they commented in an average week (χ2(1, 278) = 9.83, p = .002). At an even bigger difference, 66.7% of
at least once a week, while a mere 29.8% of those with high trust in these outlets did (χ2(1, 278) = 26.19, p<.001).
As implied by H8c, media trust differed sharply between Chile and Germany, Germans displaying more confidence in the more traditional offline news sources such as radio,
television and printed newspapers as well as professional news websites (Table 3). Table 3. Differences in media trust between Chile and Germany by medium
Chile Germany t df M SD M SD p d Mean difference Professional news websites -5.86 266.39 3.42 n = 137 .97 4.06 n = 136 .84 .000 -0.72 -.64*** Printed newspapers -10.28 258.72 2.80 n = 135 1.1 4 4.10 n = 136 .94 .000 -1.28 -1.30*** Blogs by individuals 311 247.94 2.37 n = 133 .88 2.04 n = 117 .78 .002 0.40 .33** Professional blogs 4.09 251 3.26 n = 132 .84 2.82 n = 121 .87 .000 0.52 .44*** Television news -10.75 266.19 2.49 n = 137 1.1 6 3.92 n = 133 1.03 .000 -1.32 -1.44*** Radio news -5.12 258.16 3.40 n = 136 1.0 6 4.00 n = 133 .86 .000 -0.64 -.60*** News posts on social media 1.25 264 2.28 n = 139 .96 2.13 n = 127 .95 .212 .15 Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
The hypothesis stated that this difference would mediate and thus help explain the relationship between nationality and commenting behaviour. Indeed, as shown in Figure 3, the observation of Chileans commenting more frequently both on news websites and on social media is conditional upon low trust in printed newspapers, radio and television news in this country. H8c was accepted.
Out of all U&G dimensions examined above, only user-to-journalist interactivity not only predicted commenting frequency on social media, but also differed significantly between countries (see above), thereby fulfilling both assumptions of a mediation effect. Overall, the initially suggested model thus remains reduced to two key mediating factors: trust in the
traditional news media (for commenting on news websites) and user-to-journalist interaction motives (for commenting both on news websites and on social media).
Complicating affairs, as shown in the full model in Figure 3, the significant mediation of the social media main link through media trust (indirect effect: b = -.47, SE = .17, CI: [-.87, -.20]) means that Chileans comment more because they trust the media less. However,
agreement with the user-to-journalist dimension (indirect effect: b = .20, SE = .01, CI: [.06, .42]), was, as seen above, stronger amongst German respondents. While the individual indirect effects for each mediator were thus significant, the total indirect effect was not (b = -.28, SE = .17, CI: [-.67, .01]). This appears to be a case of what MacKinnon, Fairchild and Fritz (2007) describe as “opposing mediational processes” (p. 602), the two mediating effects having different signs and therefore suppressing each other.
Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
Figure 3. Relationship between nationality and commenting frequency on news websites (solid arrows, top) and on news posts on social media (bottom).
Commenting frequency on social media
Nationality
traditional media
Trust in the
User-to-journalist
interactivity
Commenting frequency on news websites a1: b = 1.03, SE = .12*** b1: b = -.15, SE = .05*** a2: b = 1.35, SE = b2: b = -.36, SE = .11** a3: b = .53, SE = .20*Revisiting the U&G dimensional structure for commenting behavior
Adding to the main results presented in the analysis and full model above, after rating each of the U&G dimension included in the questionnaire, 61 respondents (40 Chileans and 21 Germans) chose to also leave a remark in at least one of the voluntary open response fields (“Are there any additional reasons why you comment / read comments / do not comment on news website / news posts on social media that were not mentioned above?”).
While some of the points raised simply restate items already included in the survey, others are accounted for in the original, longer version of the questionnaire as designed by Springer et al. (2015). For example, all nine German survey participants and five out of six Chileans who chose to expand on why they read comments on news websites mentioned that they see comments as a way to learn about the opinions of others and to judge public opinion, a cognitive gratification that was excluded from the questionnaire in favour of other items in the same dimension that had performed better in Springer et al.’s sample.
Most respondents, however, appeared to consider commenting as their obligation towards the public, either by defending comment sections against discriminatory hate speech (e.g., “I want to raise my voice against injustice, xenophobia and homophobia!” (CL) / “To not remain silent when others are discriminated against” (GER)) or by, especially in Chile, exercising media criticism and considering commenting a way to warn others about so-called “fake news” (comments in this category included the desire to “correct journalistic idiocy”, “denounce the fascist press” and “open the eyes of the blind”). The open answers thus suggest that many respondents are influenced by social responsibility and media criticism motives in their commenting decision. Whether these motives were equally as or more influential than some of the motives that had been included in the questionnaire should be explored in future research.
Discussion
The advent of UGC has added renewed relevance to the “active audience” perception of the established U&G framework (Sundar & Limperos, 2013). Despite a growing interest in interactive types of news media, little research has so far focused on between-platform, let alone on inter-cultural differences in online commenting motivation. Especially against the background of online participation as a potentially powerful democratizing force (Dahlberg, 2011), isolating the factors that drive users to or keep them from interacting with online news content appears relevant for scholars and media professionals alike.
Advancing this line of research, this study investigated in how far participation U&G in online news coverage differ for news published on news websites and on social media as well as between Chile and Germany as two countries with exceptionally high and low commenting prevalence. Finally, the study aimed to analyse which individual-level factors play a role in whether or not and how often a news consumer chooses to participate in interactive comment sections.
The results show that research on online participation motives needs to distinguish between different platforms. In line with previous research on online news gratifications (Hille & Bakker, 2013; Michailina et al., 2015), comment readers on social media emphasized social aspects and entertainment motives more strongly than those reading comments on news websites. This confirms the expectation, that, news content being just one of many types of content shared and consumed via social media, people who use these platforms perceive comment reading as yet another way to casually enjoy themselves and interact with their personal network. Those deliberately surfing on news websites and visiting the largely anonymous comment sections are more likely already explicitly searching for information rather than social interaction, which might explain the preference for the cognitive dimension of gratifications amongst news website commenters.
Social media news commenters did not, as expected, agree significantly more with user-to-user, nor did website commenters agree more strongly with user-to-journalist or personal identity motives. However, the comparisons of means, though not significant, did without exception point in the expected direction. The lack of significance might be explained by shortcoming in questionnaire design, only five respondents indicating that they exclusively commented on news websites, but never on social media. Future research should survey a larger number of news website commenters separately, thereby avoiding priming effects that might have occurred by most website commenters filling in both the social media and the website questionnaire in direct succession. Also, it seems promising to, rather than using the umbrella term “social media,” distinguish between different networks and potentially between different media types of the original news item, since commenting on a written feature story might differ from leaving a remark underneath a news-related video.
Another key finding of the analysis, Germans and Chileans differed in less dimensions of online participation than might have been expected given the large difference in
commenting frequency recorded both by Newman et al. (2017) and in the survey itself. Previous inter-country comparisons (Hoelig, 2016, Kim et al., 2011) had pointed towards cultural differences potentially being at the root of international variations in commenting probability. However, in the survey at hand, commenters on news websites did not differ in their motives and only two out of four dimensions (cognitive and user-to-journalism
interactivity) distinguished German and Chilean social media commenters.
The fact that Chilean comment readers particularly emphasized social motives, however, appears to confirm the assumptions about collectivist cultural traditions driving participation motives previously observed by Kim et al. (2011) in South Korea. Further analysis especially of other Latin American countries would be needed to confirm whether these differences can actually be traced back to cultural particularities.
Such factors could then be taken into account when designing comment sections or curating the social media pages of a news outlet in a particular country. For example, the results suggest that Germans might be more likely to comment if comment sections were framed as a way to directly contact the journalist (potentially by encouraging authors to actively engage in audience discussion). This desire, though not strong enough of an effect to override the overwhelming influence of the Chilean lack of trust in the media, nevertheless effectively mediated the overall trend of Chileans commenting more by tipping the balance back towards increased German commenting. It might therefore be a key factor in
encouraging German internet users to voice their opinions online. Chileans, on the other hand, might react more positively to a community-style environment with fixed usernames and features such as private messaging between commenters.
The third research question explored whether these differences in U&G suffice to explain the large discrepancy in commenting frequency and which other factors might play a role in this relationship. The analysis of individual-level factors showed that, while a news consumer’s educational level did not matter, users who use mobile devices to interact with online news do so far more frequently than those using a personal computer. This finding expands upon Hoelig's (2016) suggestion of a lack of internet penetration being a positive predictor of commenting probability, mobile devices allowing users to consume online news even without home access to the internet. Of course, a sample size of only two countries is too small to fully confirm this assumption.
Commenters are more politically engaged, but politically engaged individuals do not comment more. This finding can be explained by the fact that political activism was recorded in a one-item question only, the questionnaire not expanding on what was meant by the concept. Potentially, following the trend towards online-only “slacktivism,” individuals who spend a lot of time reading and commenting on political online news actually consider this type of behaviour a form of activism, thus explaining why commenters considered themselves
rather active. On the other hand, individuals who engage in more traditional, offline forms of political activism, such as participating in protest marches or running for political office, might overall spend more time pursuing these activities and less commenting on online news. Further research should therefore employ a more sophisticated political engagement scale that distinguishes between different forms of activism.
As shown in the overall mediation model, however, the key reason why Chileans comment far more than Germans appears to be that they trust the traditional media in their country less. As suggested by Mellado and Lagos (2014) and others, this trend is likely rooted in a mixture of historical and media economical factors in Latin America in general and Chile in particular that cannot be explored in detail here.
Either way, the large amount of “open responses” indicates that the U&G dimensions did not fully account for these motives, a shortcoming that should be addressed in future questionnaires. Potentially, the item battery could be amended by a “social responsibility” dimension, accounting for the apparent desire to counter perceived biases in both the existing comments and the news coverage itself.
More generally, the finding that people who do not trust the media are more likely to speak their mind online supports both the “active audience” notion and the vision of comment sections acting as a mouthpiece for the free and critical expression of opinions. Contrary to the initial assumptions of this paper, low numbers of commenting frequency might thus actually be a good sign: They might indicate more satisfaction with a country’s overall democratic infrastructure.
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Appendix Survey scales (translated from German / Spanish) Media trust
To what degree do you agree with the following statements about the media in [Country]? (Five-point scale: “Strongly disagree – disagree – neither agree nor disagree – agree – strongly agree”)
• The media report fairly. • The media report balanced.
• The coverage in the German / Chilean media paint an accurate picture of society. • The media coverage is unbiased.
• The media usually say the truth.
How trustworthy would you say that news from the following sources are?
(Five-point scale + “0” option: “Not trustworthy at all – rather not trustworthy – Neither trustworthy nor untrustworthy – rather trustworthy – very trustworthy – I do not consume news from this source)
• Professional news websites • Printed newspapers
• Blogs by individuals • Professional blogs • Television news
Media use
In an average week, how often do you engage in the following activities?
(Five-point scale: “Never – once a week – several times a week – daily – several times daily”)
- Comment on a news article on a news website - Read comments on a news article on a news website
- Comment on a news article on social media (e.g. on Facebook or Twitter) - Read comments on social media
- “Like” / upvote a news article on social media - “Share” a news article publicly on social media - “Share” a news article via e-mail or private message
Commenting and comment reading U&G (same scale for websites and social media), commenting inhibitors
“I comment on news websites / on news posts on social media…”
(Five-point scale: “Strongly disagree – disagree – neither agree nor disagree – agree – strongly agree”) Cognitive
• To understand events that are happening • To broaden my knowledge base
• To better understand others
User-to-journalist interactivity
• If I don’t agree with an article, one of its aspects or the journalist’s opinion • To answer the author/journalist
User-to-user interactivity • To discuss with others • To exchange with others
• I enjoy that others think the same way I do
Personal identity
• To establish my personal identity • To publish something
• To learn about myself
• Because it used to be difficult in my country to openly express one’s opinion
“I read comments on news websites / on news posts on social media…”
(Five-point scale: “Strongly disagree – disagree – neither agree nor disagree – agree – strongly agree”) Cognitive
• To broaden my knowledge base
• To understand events that are happening • To get aware of new aspects of a topic
Social integrative
• To be part of the community
• To be informed about what’s happening in the community • To meet other users
Entertainment
• It is entertaining to see others fight • For a pastime
• Because I am curious
“I do not write comments on news websites / on news posts on social media because...”
(Five-point scale: “Strongly disagree – disagree – neither agree nor disagree – agree – strongly agree”) • It is too time-consuming
• I want to protect my personal data • I do not want to register
• The standard of discussion is too low • I cannot earn money with it
• I am afraid that I might write something stupid • I do not want to discuss with people I don’t know • I do not want to publish my personal opinions.
• I do not think others care about my personal opinions. • I do not think anyone would read my comment
Device use.
You have indicated that you … . Which devices do you use when engaging in this activity (multiple choice)?
(Choice between: “Smartphone – tablet computer – laptop – desktop computer”) [Every option rated higher than ‘never’ in the ‘media use’ question]
