The Social Context of Online News: How Incivility in Online Comments Impacts Public Perceptions of and Public Engagement with Science

The online communication environment brings together social interpersonal discussions and news media in a simultaneous and physically proximate fashion. While previous studies have examined the effects of media use and interpersonal discussion on attitudes about and engagement with a variety of issues, research has yet to examine the social context of online news---or the juxtaposition of user-generated content alongside traditional news media content. In this dissertation, I explore this phenomenon in greater detail through examination of one particular type of online social communication: audience comments. I look specifically at how uncivil online comments affect public participation and public opinion across two different controversial scientific issues.;First, I examine the nature of online comments by employing computer sentiment analysis to assess levels of incivility in more than 100,000 comments about nanotechnology and nuclear energy. Second, using an online experiment given to a sample representative of the U.S. population, I examine the effects of uncivil comments following a newspaper blog post on how people participate in and form judgments about nanotechnology and nuclear energy.;Results show that incivility is a persistent phenomenon in online comments across two distinct scientific issues. Exposure to uncivil comments also has several effects on society; they 1) depress participation in a public forum on nanotechnology or nuclear energy, and 2) affect evaluations of the media sources to which they are connected. Furthermore, results reveal that individuals' experiences with media and with established issues make a difference in how they evaluate online media.;I argue that social perspectives prominent in online media play an important role in how people perceive and engage in scientific issues. This research draws from a couple of approaches within communication scholarship, including the integration of mass and interpersonal communication and deliberative democracy. However, the key perspective my dissertation draws from and contributes to is the co-existing nature of interpersonal and mass communication types. It is imperative that communication scholarship considers the influence of mass and interpersonal communication forms together rather than as distinct forms of communication.