One of the innovations that newspapers have adopted as they have moved online is comments sections. These are also, of course, common features of blogs like this one. This form of interactivity offers some benefits – they allow readers to offer their insights on a story and provide wider range of perspectives, for example. However, they also has a potential downside. As we all know, comments sections are not always civil. They can devolve into name-calling and personal attacks. A group of communication researchers, lead by Ashley Anderson, Dominque Brossard and Deitram Scheufele, carried out an experiment in order to figure out what sort of effect “nasty” comments might have on readers’ attitudes and on their perceptions of the articles they accompany. A short description of their study was published in The New York Times this Sunday, March 3, 2013. A longer description is available in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication.
Essentially, the researchers measured their participants’ initial attitudes toward a science issue relating to nanotechnology. (They chose the topic because they knew that it was one that people were unlikely to know a whole lot about already – their opinions weren’t hardened.) Then, they asked everyone to read the same newspaper article dealing with the issue. It contained equal amounts of positive information (i.e., potential benefits) and negative information (potential risks). However, the article was accompanied by a comment section, and different participants saw different versions of this. All the versions had a mix of supportive and critical comments, and the reasoning and information the posters provided remained the same. However, some participants read a version in which the comments were presented politely and civilly. The others read a version in which the comments were “nasty” in tone. An example the authors’ provide is: “If you don’t see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you’re an idiot’’ (p. 6). Then, they measured how the readers felt about the issue afterward. What they found was that reading the article with the nasty comments polarized people’s attitudes. In other words, it tend to move them farther apart. People in the “civil” condition didn’t change their minds much. If they supported the technology beforehand, they tended to after reading the article as well. If they were critical beforehand, they were critical afterward as well. However they weren’t MORE supportive or MORE critical. The participants who read the same article, followed by comments with the same information, but with a nasty, confrontational tone were different. Their opinions grew more extreme. Those who didn’t support the technology initially tend to see it as more dangerous and more risky after reading the article. Those who did support the technology saw it as less dangerous and less risky after reading. Same story, different effects, activated, it seems, by the vitriol of the comments.
This, of course, has a host of further implications. One is that, if our opinions are pulled father apart by the tone of the discussion that surround the information we read, we may be less likely to be able to compromise or to listen to other people’s points of view in the future.
Some online outlets shut down or moderate comments sections in order to minimize this type of thing. Comments on this blog, for example, are moderated – one of the administrators has to approve it before it is posted. (The goal here is not only to reduce the possibility of nastiness in on an education-oriented, University-associated site, but also to protect readers from the dodgy links that websites tend to automatically spammed with.) For those of you who are interested, the NPR program On the Media has had a series of discussions about the “to moderate or not to moderate” question. The include an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic, who moderates the comments on his blog, a discussion with Ira Glass of The American Life, an argument in favor of comments section by the editor of the Roanoke Times, and an argument against them by Lee Siegel (who was widely criticized after he used a pseudonym to respond to comments he saw as defamatory).
Comments?
The cost of rudeness: What nasty comment sections might be doing to us
One of the innovations that newspapers have adopted as they have moved online is comments sections. These are also, of course, common features of blogs like this one. This form of interactivity offers some benefits – they allow readers to offer their insights on a story and provide wider range of perspectives, for example. However, they also has a potential downside. As we all know, comments sections are not always civil. They can devolve into name-calling and personal attacks. A group of communication researchers, lead by Ashley Anderson, Dominque Brossard and Deitram Scheufele, carried out an experiment in order to figure out what sort of effect “nasty” comments might have on readers’ attitudes and on their perceptions of the articles they accompany. A short description of their study was published in The New York Times this Sunday, March 3, 2013. A longer description is available in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication.
Essentially, the researchers measured their participants’ initial attitudes toward a science issue relating to nanotechnology. (They chose the topic because they knew that it was one that people were unlikely to know a whole lot about already – their opinions weren’t hardened.) Then, they asked everyone to read the same newspaper article dealing with the issue. It contained equal amounts of positive information (i.e., potential benefits) and negative information (potential risks). However, the article was accompanied by a comment section, and different participants saw different versions of this. All the versions had a mix of supportive and critical comments, and the reasoning and information the posters provided remained the same. However, some participants read a version in which the comments were presented politely and civilly. The others read a version in which the comments were “nasty” in tone. An example the authors’ provide is: “If you don’t see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you’re an idiot’’ (p. 6). Then, they measured how the readers felt about the issue afterward. What they found was that reading the article with the nasty comments polarized people’s attitudes. In other words, it tend to move them farther apart. People in the “civil” condition didn’t change their minds much. If they supported the technology beforehand, they tended to after reading the article as well. If they were critical beforehand, they were critical afterward as well. However they weren’t MORE supportive or MORE critical. The participants who read the same article, followed by comments with the same information, but with a nasty, confrontational tone were different. Their opinions grew more extreme. Those who didn’t support the technology initially tend to see it as more dangerous and more risky after reading the article. Those who did support the technology saw it as less dangerous and less risky after reading. Same story, different effects, activated, it seems, by the vitriol of the comments.
This, of course, has a host of further implications. One is that, if our opinions are pulled father apart by the tone of the discussion that surround the information we read, we may be less likely to be able to compromise or to listen to other people’s points of view in the future.
Some online outlets shut down or moderate comments sections in order to minimize this type of thing. Comments on this blog, for example, are moderated – one of the administrators has to approve it before it is posted. (The goal here is not only to reduce the possibility of nastiness in on an education-oriented, University-associated site, but also to protect readers from the dodgy links that websites tend to automatically spammed with.) For those of you who are interested, the NPR program On the Media has had a series of discussions about the “to moderate or not to moderate” question. The include an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic, who moderates the comments on his blog, a discussion with Ira Glass of The American Life, an argument in favor of comments section by the editor of the Roanoke Times, and an argument against them by Lee Siegel (who was widely criticized after he used a pseudonym to respond to comments he saw as defamatory).
Comments?