Quality User-Generated Content? A Case Study of the Quality of Online News Comments on the Site of Finnish Public Service Broadcaster Yle

Abstract

Over the years, studies have assessed the quality of discourse in comment sections and results have been mixed. Some argue that newspapers have created forums for hate speech against minorities, that the quality of discourse undermines the democratic potential of comment sections, or that comments are troubled by incivility. Others have found that commenters produce content resembling public deliberation and that comment sections can contain fruitful discussions on divisive topics. This article contributes to the literature on the deliberative quality of news comments by assessing the deliberative quality of news comments in Finland. What is the deliberative quality of comments on Svenska Yle’s news articles? We conduct a quantitative content analysis of 565 news comments to 30 articles on Svenska Yle. Using a novel measurement strategy derived and developed from earlier research on assessments of deliberative quality, we analyze the deliberativeness, emotiveness, and confrontativeness of comments. Our findings are relatively positive since the overall quality level exceeds that of several previous studies. However, several indicators of quality still need improvement.