How to get on top – the effect of rationality and incivility of user comments on their visibility in political online discussions on Facebook

ABSTRACT Research on user comments has found that incivility in online discussions affect readers’ attitudes, feelings, and their willingness to participate in discussions. Yet the extent to which users encounter these comments in their daily routine is largely unknown. On social network sites, the number of interactions with comments, particularly the Likes and replies they receive, determines their visibility and, therefore, their potential impact on users. The study argues that the presence of rationality, personal incivility, and anti-democratic incivility in comments is related to the number of interactions that comments receive. The results of a content analysis of 2,241 comments below 499 news posts on Facebook largely support this assumption, revealing a positive association between comment rationality and the number of interactions, but also between personal incivility and interactions. Anti-democratic incivility is positively associated only with the number of replies to a comment but not with the number of Likes.