User comments: Availability and Utilization in Online News Affiliated with Local Daily Press

Abstract

User comments: Availability and Utilization in Online News Affiliated with Local Daily Press Author: Susanne Almgren Supervisor: Mats Ekström Constituent: Dagspresskollegiet (Annika Bergström/Ingela Wadbring) Course: Term Paper in Media and Communication Studies Term: Spring Term 2012 Pages/word count: 91 pages / 38 334 words Objective: To examine the users availability to the user comment feature and how the users utilizes the user comment feature in the context of an online news site affiliated with local daily press. Method: Mixed methods approach, content analysis and discourse analysis Main result: In this context, three out of four news stories (76.5 percent) has been allocated with the user comments feature. The highest availability to the user comment feature was found in news themes covering sports and entertainment, followed by financial news. News stories lacking the user comment feature were mainly found in news themes concerning crimes and accidents. The user comment frequencies are not normally distributed along news stories. On the contrary, 62 percent of the news stories did not get any user comments at all. The other news stories received user comments varying between one and 135. The user comments were highly oriented towards news stories covering the close proximity physical space, both its ordinary changing processes and issues of insecurity. Another news theme that received a high degree of user comments was connected to news stories covering politics in general. After that, the most commented news themes covered issues of health care and education. The news stories selected for the discourse analysis were chosen out of the most commented news stories. They shared the following characteristics: the voices heard in the news stories represented organizational or institutional voices, for example politicians, national union representatives, regional sport association spokesmen and the police. The users added an array of new discourses not represented by the news, by expanding the meaning of the news events in several ways.