IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v5y2016i4p68-d81405.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Angry and Alone: Demographic Characteristics of Those Who Post to Online Comment Sections

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Artime

    (Department of Politics & Government, Pacific Lutheran University, 12180 Park Avenue South, Tacoma, WA 98447, USA)

Abstract

The Internet and social media afford individuals the opportunity to post their thoughts instantaneously and largely without filters. While this has tremendous democratic potential, it also raises questions about the quality of the discourse these technological changes portend. Online comment sections may be a particularly unique form of communication within social media to investigate because of their ubiquitous and often anonymous nature. A longitudinal examination of Pew Center data over the course of 4 years suggests that there are demographic differences between people who post and those who do not post to online comment sections. Specifically, in 2008 and 2010 regression analysis demonstrates there is an increased likelihood of posting among men, the unmarried, and the unemployed. However, the 2012 data tells a different story and suggests the possibility that the nature of comment sections might be changing. The findings have important implications for understanding the character of online discourse as well as the vitriol undergirding the political attitudes of disaffected citizens.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Artime, 2016. "Angry and Alone: Demographic Characteristics of Those Who Post to Online Comment Sections," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-11, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:5:y:2016:i:4:p:68-:d:81405
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/5/4/68/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/5/4/68/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Rehan Tariq & Izzal Asnira Zolkepli & Mahyuddin Ahmad, 2022. "Political Participation of Young Voters: Tracing Direct and Indirect Effects of Social Media and Political Orientations," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-21, February.

    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:gam:jscscx:v:5:y:2016:i:4:p:68-:d:81405. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.