Hufterigheid en democratisch debat in online comments op verschillende platforms

Reader comments below online news articles can act as a platform for public discourse, but at the same time are prone to incivil behaviour. While some have argued that anonymity increases incivility, others think that anonymity increases the debate quality. In a multilevel design, we compare 1544 comments that were placed either on NUjij, the commenting platform of the Dutch news site NU.nl, or beneath the same articles on Facebook. We find that the anonymous platform NUjij does not feature more incivility. In contrast, the quality of the debate seems to be higher. A possible explanation might be the structure of both platforms: by default, Facebook does not show all previous comments in chronological order, which makes it more difficult to have a coherent discussion.