Who Are the Online Commenters? A Large-Scale Representative Survey to Explore the Identity and Motivation of Online News Commenters in Comparison to Non-Commenters

To better understand the demographic composition of people participating in commenting sections beneath online news articles, we conducted a large-scale survey (n = 5,490) with a panel that is representative of the Dutch population – the LISS panel. We combined these data with demographic background variables and previously collected data on political views and values, to provide a detailed description of the identity of online news commenters in comparison to non-commenters. Our results show that the group of commenters contain more men (55%), and the age group of 45–54 years old has the largest share of commenters (18% for men, 13% for women). Furthermore, we found little to no differences for education levels, income, location, political preferences, and cultural background, suggesting that there is no striking overrepresentation of specific groups among online commenters in general. However, when looking at the profiles of online commenters as a function of the topic and platform of discussion, differences start to emerge for gender, age, and education levels. We found no differences related to age and gender distributions for those with a higher commenting frequency, but a higher frequency does go hand in hand with more support for national populist and far-right political parties and a lower confidence in political parties.