Recipients’ Assessment of Journalistic Quality: Do online user comments or the actual journalistic quality matter?

Many studies and their findings are available concerning most aspects of online user comments and their effects. But there are few data regarding the question of whether user comments have an impact on an audience’s assessment of journalistic quality, and regarding the question of how user comments and the actual journalistic quality interact. Therefore, two experimental studies were conducted. In both experiments, the quality of a journalistic product and the valence of user comments were manipulated. The results indicate that, overall, high-quality journalistic products were evaluated as (slightly) better than low-quality versions. Furthermore, users evaluated the quality of journalistic products with positive user comments as better than the quality of identical products with negative comments. Considering that, in reality, user comments are predominantly critical, it is worrying that these comments have rather negative effects on the evaluation of journalistic work.