Deliberative Interactions in Commentary Sections. Multi-Level Analysis of Various Influencing Factors on the Extent and Quality of Discussions on the Internet.

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From the theoretical perspective of the public sphere, user comments on news websites are interesting and highly relevant for empirical research for several reasons: Contrary to readers letters to the editor, user comments are not only written to an editor, but also to a co-audience. Unlike weblogs and other forms of political expression on the internet, commentary sections allow users to participate in public discourse directly and immediately following mass media content. Thus, user comments have the potential to reach the same audience on news websites as journalistic items. The technical functions of commentary sections create conditions for deliberative interactions due to the reciprocal change of addressee and speaker roles. Regardless of how many readers actually notice user comments, comments can in turn have an effect on the process and structure of public communication. Journalists, who are in part the addressees of comments, monitor the discussions and the expressed audience preferences. The project will first pose questions about the extent and quality of user discussions in commentary sections of professional news websites. Second, for explanatory purposes, it will consider different conditions that might enhance or diminish these discussions. Such conditions have been discussed from a theoretical perspective in previous research. However, their influence on the extent and quality of deliberative interactions has yet to be systematically investigated. From a methodological perspective, to date deliberative interactions have not been examined relationally although this approach is most appropriate for describing potential network relations on the internet. For these reasons, the proposed research will examine the extent and quality of deliberative interactions in commentary sections relationally. In a second step, conditions that enhance or diminish deliberative interactions will be considered on different levels: influences of media organizations (e.g. journalistic and economic objectives), of journalistic content factors (e.g. issues, news factors), of design factors of commentary sections (e.g. moderation strategies, reply buttons), and of speaker characteristics (e.g. type of speaker, political position). A multi-level analysis will be applied to explain how the extent and degree of the quality of deliberative interactions are influenced by these factors. Additionally, an input-output analysis is proposed to explore the criteria based on which user comments are selected for publication. The input-output analysis will be combined with a survey of community managers. This will allow for the identification of motives and strategies of managers and media organizations pertaining to the conditions of deliberative interactions in commentary sections.