The Impact of Journalistic Cultures on Social Media Discourse

US Primary Debates in Cross-Lingual Online Spaces

Bibliographic Data

ID22010992
AuthorsLea Hellmueller (0000-0002-6609-9395, University of London, corresponding author), Lindita Camaj (0000-0002-5934-6159, University of Houston), Sebastián Vallejo Vera (0000-0002-5848-7400, Western University), Peggy Lindner (0000-0002-0447-5690, University of Houston)
Year2026
Volume14
Issue1
Pages126-146
Publication date2026-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDigital Journalism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2167-0811 • E-ISSN: 2167-082X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/21670811.2024.2402371
OpenAlexW4403294341
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited44

This cross-lingual project examines how social media posts of Spanish- and English-language media impact incivility in user comments during the 2020 primary political debates in the United States. We analyzed Facebook posts of news organizations that hosted the debates and used a state-of-the-art machine-learning model to analyze the corresponding comments. Our findings reveal distinct journalistic cultures on the post-level: English-language media are significantly more likely to use interpretation while Spanish-language media employ more audience-engagement and factual reporting strategies. We argue that in order to understand incivility in social media discourse during political debates, we need to consider journalistic cultures: While interpretative reporting explains lower levels of incivility in the English-language discourse, factual reporting explains lower levels of incivility in the Spanish-language discourse. We suggest that we need to consider how features of news reporting (textual and visual) impact discourse quality directly but also indirectly via emotional arousal in comments

Discourse analysis · Journalism · Linguistics · Media studies · Political science · Public relations · Social media · Sociology · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Media Studies and Communication · Social Media and Politics

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access