Hate more common in early reader comments
Comments written quickly after an article was published were more likely to contain hate and threats than those posted later. This is shown by a time analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Gothenburg of 38 million reader comments on The Guardian’s website.
The British newspaper The Guardian had over 580 million visitors to its news site in January 2024. Comments posted on articles are moderated and removed if they break the community guidelines, which include using hate speech and threats. Around 2.5 per cent of comments are removed.
Fast and wrong
Researchers from the University of Gothenburg have analysed all deleted comments from The Guardian's website between 2006 and 2024, which was 1 million out of a total of 38 million. The results show that hateful comments are posted more quickly than those that are not hateful. This means that the first comments in a thread more often contain hateful language, written in the heat of the moment.
“We conducted a time study of when the comments were written in relation to the publication of the article, or in relation to a comment to which they were a direct response,” says William Hedley Thompson, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg.
The researchers also found that if a comment contained hateful content, the likelihood of more hateful comments appearing in the same thread increased. The level of discussion is set by the first comment, and then more readers feel compelled to quickly follow suit.
Guidelines for comments
“Emotion and passion are needed in the comments section, for example to indicate strong disagreement. However, there is a limit, and therefore the most offensive comments should be deleted. This may be a setback for complete freedom of speech, but it is important for democracy,” says researcher Ben Clarke at the University of Gothenburg.
The Guardian's moderators follow a guideline where they divide uncivil comments into two main groups.
Hateful: Content that jeopardises democratic principles. Comments that attack others through racism, sexism or other forms of discrimination. Or contain explicit or veiled threats. Deleted.
Impolite: Content that may be mean or condescending towards others but does not threaten democratic values. Retained.
Like many other media outlets, The Guardian has increasingly restricted the ability to comment on news articles, with some comment sections closing 24 hours after the article is published. At the same time, there is a desire to interact with readers.
“A constructive debate in the comment threads requires a little more consideration, and such comments often require users to pause and reflect just a little. A follow-up study we conducted shows that the correlation for hateful comments does not apply to impolite ones. They are not written any faster than other comments,” says Ben Clarke.
Delay for reflection
If hatred flourishes in the earliest comments posted, one solution could be to introduce some form of delay for those who want to post a comment. Encouraging a moment's reflection could improve the climate of debate in the comments sections. Delay mechanisms are already used online today, usually for different purposes.
“Many of us have clicked on grids with images of traffic lights or flags to move forward on a web page. We have experimented with this as a way to slow commenters down, but some people are provoked by the delay and become even angrier. Going forward, we need to think about how we can slow down only the people who are likely to leave hateful comments, without annoying more people,” says William Hedley Thompson.
Scientific article in New Media & Society: Fast and furious: Temporal patterns of incivility in online comments
Contact: Ben Clarke, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Applied Information Technology at the University of Gothenburg, telephone +46 (0)766-18 35 39, e-mail: ben.clarke@ait.gu.se
William Hedley Thompson, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Applied Information Technology at the University of Gothenburg, telephone: +46 (0)766-18 29 86, e-mail: william.thompson@ait.gu.se