Assessing “The Regulars”—and Beyond |
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| Authors: | Anders Olof Larsson |
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| Institution: | Faculty of Management, Westerdals Oslo School of Arts, Communication and Technology, Norway |
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| Abstract: | Commenting on online news articles must be considered an online staple—an established practice among news consumers that is currently being funnelled from the Web pages of news organizations to third-party platforms such as Facebook. The paper at hand adopts an exploratory approach and provides insights into the fervency and popularity of commentators and comments on the Facebook pages of two Swedish and two Norwegian newspapers. The results indicate that while immigration issues are a common topic in both countries, the Swedish context stands out by also featuring high degrees of commenting activity in relation to issues of gender equality. Identifying a series of differences in how these opportunities to comment on news are used in each country, the Swedish context appears to offer a wider range of opinions among the most fervent commentators in comparison with Norway. A similar tendency is found among the most “liked” comments. |
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| Keywords: | online news comments social media Facebook Sweden Norway |
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