Implementation of user comments created a new phase in audience participation. However, high expectations on rational, responsible, and civil user commenting have quickly vanished. Online, people want to interact with others, to express their opinion on the problem, and to teach others. Thus, recent studies criticize the quality of discussions formed in the comment sections on Facebook pages of news media as well as on the news websites. High-quality discussions demand from the participants to actively connect with other participants’ comments. This research aims at exploring the interactivity of discussions that are formed through comments under FB posts published on the news media FB pages. We focus on the media for migrants and, of them, upon those for Russian-speaking migrants in Germany. This group of Internet users tend to be excluded from the public sphere of the host country, but migrant media allow them to join public debate. Thus, two German news FB public pages in Russian with more than 25,000 subscribers in the spring of 2019 were selected for analysis: German News and Germany24. The level of interactivity is measured as the ratio of comments posted in response to another user’s comment to the total number of comments under the post. On average, every third comment to the most commented posts was published as an answer to the comment of another user. Due to the criticism towards comments sections and evidence of absence of a real dialogue, we might seem this average level as a significant one.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSocial Computing and Social Media
Subtitle of host publicationExperience Design and Social Network Analysis - 13th International Conference, SCSM 2021, Held as Part of the 23rd HCI International Conference, HCII 2021, Proceedings
EditorsGabriele Meiselwitz
PublisherSpringer Nature
Pages167-178
Number of pages12
ISBN (Print)9783030776251
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021
Event13th International Conference on Social Computing and Social Media, SCSM 2021, held as part of the 23rd International Conference, HCI International 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 24 Jul 202129 Jul 2021

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume12774 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference13th International Conference on Social Computing and Social Media, SCSM 2021, held as part of the 23rd International Conference, HCI International 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period24/07/2129/07/21

    Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computer Science(all)

    Research areas

  • Comment sections, Deliberation, News media on Facebook

ID: 85041571