Paper accepted at ACM Transactions on Social Computing explores how individual visitors to partisan news sites engage in deliberative practices as they consider comments from other readers. The paper uses the theoretical lens of deliberative breakdowns and reports the results of an empirical study of how visitors assessed reader comments related to the Roy Moore case from two news sites – Breitbart and Daily Kos. We find that news stories that contradict the beliefs of readers challenge their ability to evaluate or accept events reported in these news stories; and these news stories lead the readers to commit more errors in arguments, including arguments not based on evidence. With David Murungi and David Yates (Bentley).
- Purao, S., Murungi, D., Yates, D. 2021. Deliberative Breakdowns in the Social Representation Process: Evidence from Reader Comments in Partisan News Sites. ACM Transactions on Social Computing. Volume 4, Issue 2, May 2021 Article No. 5. pp 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1145/3450143.
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