What does the crowd think? How online comments and popularity metrics affect news credibility and issue importance

Online comments hold the potential to promote positive deliberative outcomes, although past work has also shown that comments can have undesired effects when the sentiment of the crowd turns negative. Does the presence of comments possibly bolster or interfere with the reception and traditional functions of news media? Informed by the Modality-Agency-Interactivity-Navigability (MAIN) model, an online experiment tested the effect of reader comments (positive vs negative), number of “re-tweets” and “likes” (low vs high), and coverage frequency (infrequent vs frequent) on news credibility and issue importance. Negative reader comments (relative to positive comments) decreased message credibility and issue importance through the sequential indirect pathway of bandwagon perceptions, attention, and construct accessibility. Study results suggest that the traditional functions of news media may be hindered by audience incivility.