The Effects of Personality Traits and Situational Factors on the Deliberativeness and Civility of User Comments on News Websites

Authors

  • Johannes Beckert Johannes Gutenberg-Universität
  • Marc Ziegele Heinrich-Heine-Universität Duesseldorf

Keywords:

user comments, deliberation, incivility, personality, involvement, multimethod

Abstract

Comment sections have become an integral part of digital journalism. They enable users to share their viewpoints and discuss news issues with others. From a deliberative perspective, there is controversy regarding the democratic benefits of comment sections. Though previous research  analyzed causes and effects of uncivil and low-quality comments, it is not clear what makes users contribute deliberative and civil comments. The present study combines data from an online survey and a content analysis of the comments that the survey participants provided to investigate the relative importance of personality traits and situational states for commenting behavior. The findings show that the quality of user comments is both a matter of personality traits and situational states. Incivility was found to be triggered mainly by sadistic personality traits and specific article topics, whereas deliberative comments result from high levels of agreeableness, cognitive involvement, and from low levels of extraversion and positive affect.

Author Biographies

Johannes Beckert, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität

Johannes Beckert is doctoral candidate at the Department of Communication at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany.

Marc Ziegele, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Duesseldorf

Dr. Marc Ziegele is  an associate professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the Heinricht-Heine-Universität Duesseldorf, Germany.

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Published

2020-07-15

Issue

Vol. 14 (2020)

Section

Articles

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