Hate more common in early reader comments

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Sepia@mander.xyz⁩ to ⁨science@mander.xyz⁩

https://www.gu.se/en/news/hate-more-common-in-early-reader-comments

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Researchers from the University of Gothenburg have analysed all deleted comments from The Guardian’s website between 2006 and 2024, which was 1 million out of a total of 38 million. The results show that hateful comments are posted more quickly than those that are not hateful. This means that the first comments in a thread more often contain hateful language, written in the heat of the moment.

“We conducted a time study of when the comments were written in relation to the publication of the article, or in relation to a comment to which they were a direct response,” says William Hedley Thompson, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg. Bild Portrait image of Ben Clarke Ben Clarke, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Applied Information Technology at the University of Gothenburg. Photo: Gunnar Jönsson

The researchers also found that if a comment contained hateful content, the likelihood of more hateful comments appearing in the same thread increased. The level of discussion is set by the first comment, and then more readers feel compelled to quickly follow suit.

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horn_e4_beaver@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨53⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Fuck off?

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HetareKing@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Makes sense, the people who are able to comment first would be the ones that haven’t actually read the article or just skimmed over it and just have a knee-jerk reaction to the title or something. Maybe a solution is to have not a per-user delay but a global delay, i.e. the comment section doesn’t open until some time after the article is published. That won’t keep anyone from commenting without reading and reflecting on it, obviously, but it might prevent the knee-jerks from dominating the early comments and limit their influence over the tone of the rest of the comment section.

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Akasazh@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
What a bullshit conclusion

J/k I think the main reason is that angry people feel more urgency about their feelings than someone more rational.

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- Carrolade@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I think an additional factor is the early comment effect. Early comments get more visibility and engagement, so if you want to push your goals, you can post a comment if you get there early enough. If you don’t get there quick enough and there’s already hundreds or more, then there’s no point in adding your own, if your goal is actually to help your political project.
  
  Same reason I hypothesize that political extremists are more likely than other people to sort their social media posts by “new” instead of anything else.
  
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Mika@piefed.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Correlation vs Causation here? Articles can deliver different messages and be of different quality.

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- frongt@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  I don’t think they’re suggesting that posting an article causes hate comments, no.
  
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