Enriching the Conversation: Audience Perspectives on the Deliberative Nature and Potential of User Comments for News Media

Abstract

While deliberation is regarded as crucial for democracies, research on the deliberative nature of user comments in journalism has so far been inconclusive and somewhat neglected to assess audience views qualitatively. Based on 26 in-depth interviews with German media users, this study therefore explores audience views on the deliberative nature and potential of user comments by examining their reasons for active and passive (non-)use, evaluations of comments and perceived personal and societal importance of comments. While users criticize a lack of deliberative or even non-deliberative elements and this drives them to not participate, to evaluate comments negatively and to not attribute personal value to comments, the findings also show that users recognize deliberative elements and that—when present—this deliberative nature is a reason for participation and positive evaluations. Users especially value the often unfulfilled or impeded deliberative potential of comments for society. Strategies to strengthen deliberation and future avenues of research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Audience research
• deliberation
• journalism
• participatory journalism
• qualitative research
• user comments
• letters to the editor

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Bernadette Uth, Valerie Hase and the reviewers as well as the editors for their helpful and insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Jacobs, Cook, Delli Carpini (2009) list political efficacy as a fifth condition of deliberation. Since this condition deals with the consequences of deliberative public discourse for politics rather than its characteristics, which are the focal point of this paper, it is not elaborated on further.

2 For studies on the deliberative nature (or related concepts) of letters to the editor, see for example, McCluskey and Hmielowski (2012), Nielsen (2010), and Wahl-Jorgensen (2007).

3 The author would like to thank Valerie Hase and Florian Wintterlin for their contributions in developing the topic guide as well as conducting and analyzing the interviews.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Training Group 1712 ‘Trust and Communication in a Digitized World’ of the German Research Foundation (DFG).