The Good, the Bad, and the Evil Media: Influence of Online Comments on Media Trust

ABSTRACT

In two experiments, this manuscript examines the impact of uncivil news comments for both users and newsrooms. The first experiment varied the tone of the comments and determined that uncivil comments reduced media trust and outlet trust in comparison to civil comments. The second study examined the target of the comments and determined that uncivil comments targeting the author of the story decreased media trust, and uncivil comments targeting the outlet reduced trust in the specific media outlet. Neither the nature of the comments nor comment targets were related to use intentions. Implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Media effects
• online comments
• media trust
• political communication
• information processing
• civility

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 This study was approved by the IRB of he University of Florida, IRB#202000609.

2 A chi-square test determined that party ID was unrelated to condition assignment (χ² (6) = 2.052, p = .915), thus while prior research suggests that partisanship would influence trust, random assignment did effectively account for ideological influences on trust. To confirm, we ran ANCOVAs including ideology as a control variable. Our results remained identical. The ANCOVA tables are included in the online appendix.

3 The manipulation check question asked participants to indicate the tone of the comments they saw on the article. If they saw no comments, they could select “no comments on my article.”

4 This study was approved by the IRB of the University of Florida, IRB#202001959.

5 A chi-square test determined that party ID was unrelated to condition assignment (χ² (3) = 3.24, p = .356), thus while prior research suggests that partisanship would influence trust, random assignment did effectively account for ideological influences on trust. To confirm, we ran ANCOVAs including ideology as a control variable. Our results remained identical. The ANCOVA tables are included in the online appendix.

6 The first manipulation check question asked participants to indicate the tone of the comments they saw on the article. If they saw no comments, they could select “no comments on my article.” The second manipulation check question asked participants to indicate the ideological lean of comments they saw on the article. If they saw no comments, they could select “no comments on my article.”