Comments on political news, and the relation of platform affordances to them was the topic of this article by Jinping Wang from University of Florida and Hai Liang from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, using an experimental study design with 775 participants.
Digital news and commenting on news stories there facilitates exchanges between users and news organizations and within communities, even if only about 18% comment on social media, with 31% on social media, and 25% on news sites read comments.
Technological affordances, or “action possibilities” (Gibson 1977) can predetermine expression characteristics. One example is Twitter (now X) expanding the allowed post length from 140 to 280 characters in 2017, and it has since even removed the limit for “Premium” (paid) users. One key affordance is the required effort to express oneself. Also, the role of the audience has an effect, as commenters think of who they are writing to.
The research questions were the following: RQ1: How does releasing comments to different audience types (private, public, ingroup, outgroup) affect emotional responses? RQ2: How does releasing comments to different audience types (private, public, ingroup, outgroup) affect affective polarization? RQ3: Does the effect of comment length on emotional responses (anger, enthusiasm) vary by audience type (private, public, ingroup, outgroup)? RQ4: Does the effect of comment length on affective polarization vary by audience type (private, public, ingroup, outgroup)?
The study design involved ten conditions: 2 (low effort vs. high effort) x 4 (commenting without releasing, releasing to the public, releasing to in-group members, and releasing to out-group members) action conditions + cure condition + control condition. The distinct issues chosen for the stories were gun control, offshore drilling in the U.S., and LGBTQ topics in education.
Participants selected the topic that interested them the most and read a corresponding news story on a (fictitious) news aggregator site offering different comment affordances. This selection occurred before the assignment to the experimental conditions.
Low effort was defined as up to 20 words comment, and high effort as at least 40 words – this was to create a clear distinction. There was also a cue group who could not use the comment function but see the comments, and the control group who only saw the news.
The effort level had a significant effect on the enthusiasm, with high effort comments generating much more enthusiasm. With anger, effort or audience did not have a significant effect. When it comes to affective polarization, a significant interaction effect was observed between comment effort and audience group, supporting RQ4.
An exploratory linguistic analysis of comment content was also conducted, treating each comment as a separate document. Participants in the low-effort and ingroup condition reported lower anger and higher enthusiasm. When participants wrote more detailed opinions, keeping them private was associated with higher affective polarization than releasing them publicly. Short public comments increased enthusiasm more than private ones.
In conclusion, the study offered novel insights on the theory, with many hypotheses not being supported, advancing the mass-interpersonal-intrapersonal framework. The authors note that many news organizations have closed comments, as while they enhance engagement and facilitate public deliberation, they can also amplify polarization. The findings suggest that news platforms should recognize affordances as affecting discourse quality and democratic outcomes.
The article “How Platform Affordances Shape Expression Effects: Comment Length and Audience in Political News Engagement” by Jinping Wang and Hai Liang is in Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media.
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