Understanding News-Related User Comments and their Effects: A Systematic Review (2023)
Undergraduates: Mariam Wahba, Cate Davis
Faculty Advisor: Kurt Gray
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience
In the Internet era, we no longer passively receive news content—but can actively engage with it (e.g., via writing comments below news content). These user comments have important implications as they shape attitudes and beliefs and have become an important area of social science research. In this current research, we systematically analyze 231 papers (248 studies) about user comments posted under news to understand 1) what these comments look like (i.e., content analysis), 2) constructs that correlate with user comments (i.e., surveys) and 3) the effect of these comments (i.e., experiments). We find that few explore the correlates of user comments and that there is an overemphasis on Western (and non-representative data). Further, we find a hyperfocus on understanding comments under online news articles (and not news videos), and comments under news content on Facebook (with no consideration of increasingly relevant platforms like TikTok). Further, in our qualitative analyses, we find great diversity in the news topics studied, the demographics of commentors, why they choose to comment, and the effect of uncivil comments. Overall, this review provides an overview of the current state of research on news-related user comments and identifies areas where further research is needed.
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