Online social environments and their impact on video viewers The effects of user comments on entertainment experiences and knowledge gain during political satire consumption

Political satire is often consumed on online platforms (e.g. YouTube) and the effects of its consumption may be highly conditional on the user comments that are surrounding it. By manipulating the valence of comments (positive vs negative) and the focus of these comments (hedonic entertainment value vs eudaimonic entertainment value vs informative value), this pre-registered experiment investigates how user comments affect satire viewers’ hedonic entertainment experiences, their eudaimonic entertainment experiences, and their knowledge gain. Analyses showed that the valence of comments congruently affected viewers’ hedonic entertainment experiences, eudaimonic entertainment experiences, and subjective knowledge gain, but not their objective knowledge gain. In addition, the focus of user comments affected eudaimonic entertainment experiences and knowledge gain regardless of comments’ valence. This study’s findings advance our understanding of how viewers are affected when they consume media content that is surrounded by the comments of other viewers.