New publication from the project study phase 2023: How writing user comments changes political opinions

User comments on social networks offer the opportunity to comment on political issues, draw attention to concerns and provide feedback on media coverage. The fact that reading such user comments sometimes has strong effects on attitudes and the perception of the opinion climate is well documented in research. In a new publication, a group from the 2023 project study phase has now shown that writing such comments also has an effect on opinions. The study was published in the journal Communication Research Reports.

In an online experiment with around 1,000 participants, the students tested whether commenting (compared to simply reading a news article) influences opinions - depending on the opinion environment in which comments were made, i.e. whether other comments agreed or disagreed with their own opinion.

The key result: those who express their opinion in a comment subsequently express this opinion even more strongly. However, this applies above all to those who did not previously have a strongly held position. Surprisingly, the opinion environment (agreement/disagreement) had no influence on this effect. Such so-called “self-effects” have hardly been investigated so far, but can be a further building block for understanding polarization and radicalization on the internet.

The study was conducted under the supervision of JProf. Dr. Fabian Prochazka, participating students in the project group were Julian Cantzler, Hanna Göthert, Selina Hartung, Sophia Konermann, Julia Lotz, Emilie Neureither and Ronja Nittel.

Click here for the study (open access).