A discussão pública e as redes sociais online: o comentário de notícias no Facebook

This paper analyzes the arenas of discussion on Facebook pages of Brazilian newspapers. This approach recognizes the political commentary at Facebook as relevant in the contemporary public sphere for the discussion about issues of public importance. The sample consists of 1,164 comments published on the pages of Folha de S. Paulo, O Estado de S. Paulo and O Globo. The aim is to evaluate the quality of these arenas through the deliberative criteria of reciprocity, reason-giving, level of justification and respect, and to discuss structural elements of Facebook, the social appropriation and the public debate. In general, the networks of political conversations that surround the news work like amplifiers of diversity of arguments, demonstrating that in issues on which there is strong consensus there is a tendency for lower deliberation rates, and there is no reciprocity in almost half of the comments and more than 50% of posts have no justification. Keywords: online deliberation, news commentary, Facebook.