Under watching eyes in news comment sections: effects of audience cue on self-awareness and commenting behaviour

ABSTRACT

The watching-eye effect proposes that others’ eyes cause people to behave in a prosocial manner. The current study tested this in the context of an online news website, by investigating whether a watching-eye icon influences users’ attention to themselves and expressions of their opinions in a comment section. In an online experiment, participants (N = 741) used an online news website in the presence (vs. absence) of a watching eye as a visual cue for an imagined audience, who reportedly presented their opinions in a comment section. Results showed that the watching eye did influence participants’ private and public self-awareness and the quality of their comments. Presence of the visual cues, compared to its absence, increased female participants’ self-awareness, specifically when others’ opinions revealed in the comment section were mixed or opposed to the news article topic. This increased private self-awareness was positively associated with the comment quality. These findings indicate the importance of social cues on interfaces in mitigating the negative consequences of anonymity in online environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Online comments
• news comment
• self-awareness
• eye-gazing cue
• visual cue

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Science and ICT), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program [IITP-2021-0-02051] supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation).