Ethics of readers’ comments on news websites and their Facebook pages:

Document Type : Original Article

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Assistant professor of mass communication – Faculty of Arts – Helwan University

Abstract

The readers’ comments on news websites provide a major form of readers’ contribution to news websites. These comments have dramatically increased as news websites established their own accounts on social media. Readers can comment on the original news story or interact with others’ comments, raising many ethical questions. This study attempts to identify the ethical criteria put forward by news websites for publishing and removing comments. It also examines readers’ comments to classify ethical violations and assess the degree to which readers abide by codes of the ethics when commenting on news. The study uses public sphere and social responsibility as theoretical framework. It employs a mixed-method approach, in which a content analysis is done for a sample of eight Egyptian news websites and a survey is used to collect information from those news websites editors. The researcher analysed Al-Yom El Sabea, Al wattan, Al Masry AL Youm, El Shorouk, Masrawy, Al-Ahram, Al-Wafd and Vito between the 1st and 10th of June 2015.  The study showed a significant proportion of ethical violations found in readers’ comments, which indicate that people rarely exercise self-censorship or social responsibility. 

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