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Abstract
The research on online news comments has been dominated by a normative approach and has centered on media engagement. Normativity and media dominance have also featured big in the theoretical discussions on the public sphere. This article presents a case study of online news comments, combining a novel methodological testing of social network hypotheses to examine user–user interactions in online comments with a conceptual discussion of the potential connections between social network research and theories of the public. The social network analysis in this study indicated that users (online commentators) do not constitute highly dense networks, although their relations can be studied as social networks. However, this analysis can only explore limited features of this online phenomenon and requires complementary methods. From a conceptual perspective, this article confirms the role of shared issue for a potential public and also emphasizes the importance of context, actors, and meanings for understanding the public.
Disclosure statement
The author reports no potential conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by the University of Tampere, the C.V. Åkerlund Foundation and the Emil Aaltonen Foundation.
Notes
1 NOTES
The term commentator is used to exclusively describe a reader posting a comment on online news.
2 The fact that the term public has indefinite linguistic meanings causes more complexity. In English, public is usually paired with audience. In Finnish, the term yleisö, referring to both audience and public, has long had a twofold meaning. In the late 1990s, Ridell and Pietilä (1998) brought the term julkiso to the field to further elucidate the discussion. To them, julkiso was a counterword for the public (see Blumer Citation1961).
3 At the time of data collection, it was also possible to click yes or no to “I agree” and “well reasoned” on each comment. The effect of these functions has not been studied yet.
4 Translated by the author.
5 News also form the starting point of the comment chains, and at least one comment is necessary to create a chain of comments.
6 Translation from the Finnish word arvotettu.
7 Page-rank value measures importance or how central a node is within the network.
8 Translated by the author.
9 Even though it is possible to address another user without this function directly by name, this seems rather rare, and practically all user–user interactions are made by using the reply button. The few name-directed comments are nevertheless taken into account in the analysis.
10 Translated by the author.
11 Including news as only objects decreases density since news never create an edge, i.e., news never leave a comment.
12 Ziegele, Breiner, and Quiring (Citation2014) found out that this trend is connected to the content of the comment: “Some interviewees preferred responding to factual comments but others perceived that—due to their high level of objectiveness—such comments leave no room for discussion” (1119).
13 Translated by the author.