A new study from the University of Georgia has affirmed that social media comments can affect the perceptions of readers.
in the 2019 edition of Political Psychology, the study is titled “How Web Comments Affect Perceptions of Political Interviews and Journalistic Control.” The experiment examined the effect of social media comments in relation to a political interview. The researchers focused on the social media comments about a staged video of an interview with a nonpartisan political figure and a journalist.
The research aimed to identify the impact of comments made by strangers on those who watched the interview. Findings revealed that the group of 18- to 60-year-olds were heavily influenced by the comments that they almost repeated the comments themselves.
Meanwhile, the college student group appeared to not be affected by the comments. However, in the survey, they echoed the attitudes manifested in the comment sections.
“Comment sections are extremely powerful,” said David Clementson, the study’s author and an assistant professor of public relations at UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. “This research found that people will echo the sentiments expressed by anonymous strangers and will share opinions and attitudes about politicians and journalists in accordance with comments expressed by strangers.”
“The study shows that this is a frontier of extreme influence that isn’t getting as much attention as fake news and fake tweets,” Clementson added. “If your goal is to influence opinions, it’s a lot more time efficient, and perhaps more impactful, to post a comment than create a website or fake social media account.”
The experiment was divided into three groups: “a control group that had no comments beneath the interview; a group that viewed comments accusing the politician of being deceptive or dodging questions; and a group that viewed comments accusing the journalist of being deceptive and biased.”
“Media outlets can rest assured that when a comment section impugns the credibility of their journalist, their journalist will probably still have more credibility than the politician, even when the comments defend the politician. The politician stands to lose more from comment sections,” Clementson said.
