IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/telpol/v44y2020i8s0308596120301002.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does rule change cause activity change? An empirical study of online news comments in Korea

Author

Listed:
  • Baek, Hyunmi
  • Jang, Moonkyoung
  • Kim, Seongcheol

Abstract

Koreans mainly consume online news through a few Internet portals, so issues such as manipulation of online news comments can become significant social problems in Korea. To respond to the May 2018 Druking opinion-rigging scandal, Naver—the leading Internet portal in Korea—changed its rule of ordering online news comments from most reactions to reverse chronological, with the latest appearing first. This study examined the impact of the new rule of ordering online news comments by using online news comments data from before and after Naver's rule change. Difference-in-difference estimation was conducted to examine the consequences of the new rule of ordering online news comments. Although the results show that the rule change did not impact the number of online news comments, the number of upvotes and downvotes significantly decreased, and the distributions of upvotes and downvotes were spread evenly rather than skewed to one side.

Suggested Citation

  • Baek, Hyunmi & Jang, Moonkyoung & Kim, Seongcheol, 2020. "Does rule change cause activity change? An empirical study of online news comments in Korea," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(8).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:telpol:v:44:y:2020:i:8:s0308596120301002
    DOI: 10.1016/j.telpol.2020.102008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308596120301002
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.telpol.2020.102008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ruut Veenhoven, 2005. "Inequality Of Happiness in Nations," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 351-355, December.
    2. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:12:y:2005:i:5:p:1-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Meyer, Bruce D & Viscusi, W Kip & Durbin, David L, 1995. "Workers' Compensation and Injury Duration: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 322-340, June.
    4. Wim Kalmijn & Ruut Veenhoven, 2005. "Measuring Inequality of Happiness in Nations: In Search for Proper Statistics," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 357-396, December.
    5. Meyer, Bruce D, 1995. "Natural and Quasi-experiments in Economics," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(2), pages 151-161, April.
    6. Daniel Mizak & Armond Rossi & Anthony Stair, 2005. "Assessing alternative competitive balance measures for sports leagues: a theoretical examination of standard deviations, gini coefficients, & the index of dissimilarity," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 12(5), pages 1-11.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Avom, Désiré & Dadegnon, Aimé Kocou & Igue, Charlemagne Babatoundé, 2021. "Does digitalization promote net job creation? Empirical evidence from WAEMU countries," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(8).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pan Zhang & Zhiguo Wang, 2019. "PM 2.5 Concentrations and Subjective Well-Being: Longitudinal Evidence from Aggregated Panel Data from Chinese Provinces," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-13, March.
    2. Chun-Hung A. Lin & Suchandra Lahiri & Ching-Po Hsu, 2017. "Happiness and Globalization: A Spatial Econometric Approach," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(6), pages 1841-1857, December.
    3. Ingebjørg Kristoffersen, 2010. "The Metrics of Subjective Wellbeing: Cardinality, Neutrality and Additivity," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 86(272), pages 98-123, March.
    4. Aydemir, Abdurrahman B. & Kırdar, Murat G., 2017. "Quasi-experimental impact estimates of immigrant labor supply shocks: The role of treatment and comparison group matching and relative skill composition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 282-315.
    5. Néstor Gandelman & Rafael Porzecanski, 2013. "Happiness Inequality: How Much is Reasonable?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 110(1), pages 257-269, January.
    6. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2006. "Identification and Inference in Nonlinear Difference-in-Differences Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(2), pages 431-497, March.
    7. Cristina Bernini & Silvia Emili & Federica Galli, 2021. "Does urbanization matter in the expenditure‐happiness nexus?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(6), pages 1403-1428, December.
    8. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2020. "Better off? Distributional comparisons for ordinal data about personal well-being," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(3), pages 211-238, September.
    9. Johan Graafland & Bjorn Lous, 2019. "Income Inequality, Life Satisfaction Inequality and Trust: A Cross Country Panel Analysis," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(6), pages 1717-1737, August.
    10. Umakrishnan Kollamparambil, 2020. "Happiness, Happiness Inequality and Income Dynamics in South Africa," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 201-222, January.
    11. Sánchez-Mangas, Rocio & Sánchez-Marcos, Virginia, 2008. "Balancing family and work: The effect of cash benefits for working mothers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(6), pages 1127-1142, December.
    12. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Krueger, 2001. "Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 69-85, Fall.
    13. Andrew E. Clark & Sarah Flèche & Claudia Senik, 2012. "The Great Happiness Moderation," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 468, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    14. Yew-Kwang Ng, 2015. "Some Conceptual And Methodological Issues On Happiness: Lessons From Evolutionary Biology," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 60(04), pages 1-17.
    15. Joep Burger & Jacqueline Beuningen, 2020. "Measuring well-being dispersion on discrete rating scales," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(3), pages 749-773, June.
    16. Pascarn R. Dickinson & Philip S. Morrison, 2022. "Aversion to Local Wellbeing Inequality is Moderated by Social Engagement and Sense of Community," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 907-926, February.
    17. Feng Mao & Joshua D. Miller & Sera L. Young & Stefan Krause & David M. Hannah, 2022. "Inequality of household water security follows a Development Kuznets Curve," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    18. Indranil Dutta & James Foster, 2011. "Inequality of Happiness in US: 1972-2008," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1110, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    19. Ruut Veenhoven, 2005. "Return of Inequality in Modern Society? Test by Dispersion of Life-Satisfaction Across Time and Nations," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 457-487, December.
    20. Naoki Akaeda, 2020. "Contextual Social Trust and Well-Being Inequality: From the Perspectives of Education and Income," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(8), pages 2957-2979, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:telpol:v:44:y:2020:i:8:s0308596120301002. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.