News comment sections and online echo chambers: The ideological alignment between partisan news stories and their user comments | Zendy

Jiyoung Han | Zendy; Young In Lee | Zendy; Junbum Lee | Zendy; Meeyoung Cha | Zendy

Open Access

News comment sections and online echo chambers: The ideological alignment between partisan news stories and their user comments

Author(s) -

Jiyoung Han,

Young In Lee,

Junbum Lee,

Meeyoung Cha

Publication year - 2022

Publication title -

journalism

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

eISSN - 1741-3001

pISSN - 1464-8849

DOI - 10.1177/14648849211069241

Subject(s) - realm , echo (communications protocol) , politics , ideology , public sphere , political science , news aggregator , news media , media studies , sociology , computer science , law , world wide web , computer network

This study explored the presence of digital echo chambers in the realm of partisan media’s news comment sections in South Korea. We analyzed the political slant of 152 K user comments written by 76 K unique contributors on NAVER, the country’s most popular news aggregator. We found that the political slant of the average user comments to be in alignment with the political leaning of the conservative news outlets; however, this was not true of the progressive media. A considerable number of comment contributors made a crossover from like-minded to cross-cutting partisan media and argued with their political opponents. The majority of these crossover commenters were “headstrong ideologues,” followed by “flip-floppers” and “opponents.” The implications of the present study are discussed in light of the potential for the news comment sections to be the digital cafés of Public Sphere 2.0 rather than echo chambers.

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