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Online comments and contributions from users are not always constructive nor rational. This also applies to content that is directed at journalists or published on journalistic platforms. So-called ‘dark participation’ in online communication is a challenge that journalists have to face because it lowers users’ perceived credibility of media brands and hinders a deliberative discourse in comment sections. This study examines how journalists perceive themselves in relation to dark participation, what measures they take against it, and how they assess the efficacy of these measures. Based on in-depth interviews ( N = 26), we find that journalists overall considered themselves to be effective in handling dark participation. The perceived efficacy differed according to the grade of engagement with users. Journalists who interacted very much or very little with users perceive the efficacy of their interventions to be highest, whilst those with medium levels of interaction rate their efficacy to be lower. Furthermore, the perceived amount of dark participation also affected the perceived efficacy.

Online media offer unprecedented access to digital public spheres, largely enhancing users’ opportunities for participation and providing new means for strengthening democratic discourse. At the same time, the last decades have demonstrated that online discourses are often characterised by so-called ‘dark participation’ the spreading of lies and incivility. Using ‘problematic behaviour theory’ as framework and focusing on incivility as a specific form of dark participation, this article investigates the role of users’ personal characteristics, media use, and online experiences in relation to offensive and hateful online behaviour. Using a random-quota survey of the German population, we explored how dark personality traits, political attitudes and emotions, the frequency and spaces of online-media use, and users’ experiences with both civil and uncivil online discourses predicted participants own uncivil behaviour, such as posting, sharing, or liking uncivil content. We found that 46% of the participants who had witnessed incivility in the last three months also engaged in uncivil participation. A hierarchical logistic regression analysis showed that incivility was associated with manipulative personality traits as measured by the dark triad, right-wing populist voting intentions, and frequent social-media use. Experiences with both civil comments and hate speech predicted higher levels of uncivil participation. The strongest predictor was participants’ personal experiences with online victimisation. Overall, the results confirmed that dark participation in the sense of uncivil engagement results from the interplay of personality traits, an online environment that allows for deviant engagement, and, most importantly, participants’ experiences in said environment., Finanziert durch den Open-Access-Publikationsfonds der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU Münster).

In recent times, distorted information has frequently been discussed as a serious problem for democracies. There are concerns that such information spreading via social media may lead to severe eff...

Comments in designated sections of newspaper websites and on social media platforms are the most prominent form of user participation in journalism, offering the opportunity to connect to the audie...

Trust plays a pivotal role in many different contexts and thus has been investigated by researchers in a variety of disciplines. In this chapter, we provide a comprehensive overview of methodological approaches to investigating trust and its antecedents. We explain how quantitative methods may be used to measure expectations about a trustee or instances of communication about trust efficiently, and we explain how using qualitative measures may be beneficial to researching trust in less explored contexts and for further theory development. We further point out that mixed methods research (uniting both quantitative and qualitative approaches) may be able to grasp the full complexity of trust. Finally, we introduce how agent-based modeling may be used to simulate and predict complex trust relationships on different levels of analysis. We elaborate on challenges and advantages of all these different methodological approaches to researching trust and conclude with recommendations to guide trust researchers in their planning of future investigations on both situational trust and long-term developments of trust in different contexts, and we emphasize why we believe that such undertakings will benefit from interdisciplinary approaches.

Political communication via social media might well counter the eroding political trust. In particular, social networking sites (SNS) enable direct flows of communication between citizens and the political elite, thereby reducing social and political gaps. Based on the concept of personalization of politics, we argue that interactions with politicians on SNS affect trust in government through a two-step process: First, interactions on SNS make citizens evaluate politicians’ characters more favorably. Second, these evaluations serve as cues for the citizens to develop or withdraw trust in government. We test indirect effects using four character traits as mediators: leadership, benevolence, responsiveness, and likeability. A representative online survey ( n = 1117; in Germany) reveals that interactions with politicians on SNS increase the perceived likeability of candidates, and thus also trust in government. However, they do not affect the evaluation of the other traits: leadership, benevolence, and responsiveness.

Mit der quasi allgegenwärtigen Präsenz des (mobilen) Internets geht zum einen ein großes demokratisches Potential einher: Ganz nach Habermas' Theorie der deliberativen Demokratie können sich Bürger_innen online frei über relevante Themen informieren und in einen Diskurs eintreten, der zu einem gemeinsamen Konsens führt. Auf der dunklen Seite der digitalen Öffentlichkeit werden Fehlinformationen, Propaganda und Hass eine Bühne geboten. Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der strategischen Verbreitung von Desinformation in digitalen Öffentlichkeiten, auch Information Warfare genannt. Neben einem Überblick über die aktuelle Forschung stellt dieser Beitrag anhand einer Feldstudie dar, wie eine solche Kampagne aussehen und wie damit erfolgreich umgegangen werden kann.

Integrating user-generated content (UGC) has become an everyday practice in online journalism. Previous research suggests this can have both a beneficial and detrimental effect on a recipient’s perception of online journalism’s trustworthiness. We conducted an online experiment that, on the one hand, examined the overall influence of integrating UGC in an online news article compared to leaving it out altogether. On the other hand, we also analyzed how two specific modes of integrating UGC, namely its verification and visualization, influence trustworthiness. Controlling for different news topics, our results show that UGC is not a way to boost journalistic trustworthiness. In general, the journalistic use of UGC has a negative but overall weak impact on recipients’ perceived trustworthiness of a news article. Regarding the mode of integration, the verification of UGC to some extent positively increases trustworthiness, while visual integration has no substantial impact. Overall, the study sheds light on ...

The trustworthiness of journalistic sources has always been a crucial element of journalistic working patterns and gained recently prominence in the public discourse about spectacular verification fails. To ensure the correctness of news, journalists have to trust their sources to deliver reliable information. This article explores trust building processes in the relationship between journalists and distant sources they access online. Sociological and psychological trust literature and research on credibility are used to develop an analytical model of reflexive trust in journalistic sources. Based on qualitative data from 12 in-depth interviews with German journalists, the model is applied to relationships between home-based journalists and sources based in crisis regions.

According to journalistic norms, journalists should report accurately and in a timely manner on current events. How journalists deal with this challenge when reporting on crises, which is characterised by a rapid succession of events and the absence of established sources, is examined in this book. In such cases, distant sources, who journalists do not have the chance to meet in person and whose content they access via social media, gain in importance. This study examines the relevance of distant sources for journalistic sourcing, how journalists judge their trustworthiness and which factors on the side of journalists influence the verification process. Methodologically, it combines in-depth interviews, content analysis and a survey of online journalists to gain a better understanding of how journalists deal with distant sources.

In order to maintain its credibility, news journalism largely depends on the accuracy of facts. One key factor necessary for building trust in journalism is the trustworthiness and reliability of its sources. News journalism needs to trust its sources to deliver accurate information in order to fulfill journalistic standards. Journalists always have to balance the risk of reporting selected parts of the constant flow of information. The process of fact checking to verify news material is of great importance in minimizing the risk. However, digitalization and the dramatic increase in possible news sources, demand new and better ways to cope with the issue of source trustworthiness. With a few exceptions, journalism research has not dealt with trust issues in the relationship between journalists and sources. In order to bridge this gap, we propose a reflexive understanding of journalistic trust in sources which is based on the perception of risk and trustworthiness.