Understanding intent, behavior and emotion in user comments

This study tests the process of writing a user comment on a news website: it follows the user's exposure to an online article, exposure to others’ comments, decision to write their own comment (or not), and the social behavior of writing itself, as well as the characteristics of the writing. We aim to examine whether exposure to positive and negative user comments on an online journalistic article affects the user's intention to send a comment and, more importantly, the sentiment of the comment posted. We also test whether a user's opinion or their perception of majority support of their opinion have an impact on either their intention to post a comment or their comments’ sentiment. Results show that exposure to comments, whether positive or negative, almost doubles the intentions of posting a comment. Exposure to negative comments dramatically increases the probability of writing a negative comment, while exposure to positive comments has a moderating effect. In line with the spiral of silence theory, self-perceived support for one’s opinion by the majority significantly contributes to the prediction of comment posting, even after controlling for the effect of personal opinion.