Below, Below the Fold: Sexist Rhetoric in Online Comment Sections

• In Event: R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Gender Identiy, Bias, & Discrimination in Political Communication

Abstract

Comment sections have become an increasingly common forum for interacting with others on political issues. During the 2016 presidential election, I collected comments from a variety of sites (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, and The Seattle Times) and arrived at several interesting conclusions. Specifically, comment sections were more negative, less positive, angrier, and more sexually explicit than the mean. In the spring of 2020, we will collect all of the comments on randomly selected articles from all of the same sources from the end of the conventions until the general election. Likewise, we will incorporate a manual review of the comments to develop a more nuanced understanding of how comment sections are unique in tone and substance. For example, the content analysis program highlights each instance that it flags as sexually explicit in a certain color. Consequently, we can read those comments and determine the nature of the conservations in which that language is situated. This is important because, it is conceivable that conversations of this type could be about women’s health and part of a valuable political and personal dialogue. However, it is also possible that the conversation is one that uses hostile, violent, misogynistic rhetoric. This research has implications for both news consumers and media organizations. For consumers, this is a venue where many political conversations occur and being reflective about the nature of those conversations and how they might be shaping our own thoughts as well as those of our friends, family members, and neighbors is an important responsibility that we have as citizens. For news organizations, this kind of research can serve to facilitate informed conversations about whether to maintain, modify, or remove comment sections from their sites. Ultimately, more information makes us better equipped to handle decisions about the type of political conversations we want to promote and how we can best pursue that ideal.

Author

• Michael Artime, Pacific Lutheran University