READERS’ COMMENTS ON NEWS WEBSITES AS A FORM OF PARTICIPATORY JOURNALISM: THE CASE OF THE PROPOSAL TO AWARD AN HONORARY DOCTORATE TO THE MAYOR OF ZAGREB MILAN BANDIĆ

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse readers’ comments on three Croatian news websites (24sata.hr, Index.hr and Net.hr) about the controversial proposal of the Head of the University of Zagreb to award an honorary doctorate to the Mayor of Zagreb Milan Bandić. In this article, comments are explored within the theoretical concept of the digital public sphere and the concept of deliberativedemocratic public sphere, according to which, a networked society transforms and shapes not only communication but also power relations among people through participation of citizens, through decentralised and interactive communication. A quantitative content analysis was conducted on 2852 comments published in the period from 27 November 2018 to 15 April 2019, i.e., in the period in which the topic was part of the media agenda. The relationship between headlines, photographs and comments was analysed. A sentiment analysis was performed as a method for gathering the polarity of emotions of commentators (Liu, 2012) and as an aspect of Dahlberg’s categories (2007), the contribution to public debate was analysed. The results show a very negative attitude of citizens towards the proposal to award an honorary doctorate to Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić. A connection is implied between negative stylistic expressions of titles and photographs of articles with attitudes of the commentators. Furthermore, a relatively small amount of hostility speech and hate speech was found, even in negative comments and discussions with low levels of argumentation.