New research from the Science, Media and the Public (SCIMEP) lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, affiliated with LSC, on the adverse effects of negative comments online is out this week in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. The full text of the article is available here.
The study is lead by LSC alumna Ashley A. Anderson (Ph.D., ’12) and co-authored by LSC faculty Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele, along with Associate Professor Michael Xenos from the UW-Madison Department of Communication Arts and LSC alumnus Peter Ladwig (M.S., ’11).
This material is based upon work supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation to the UW-Madison Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center in Templated Synthesis and Assembly at the Nanoscale (Grant No. SES-DMR-0832760). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
The research was first previewed in Science magazine in January and has received wide spread press attention since then. Below are just a few of the media mentions:
A trollok győznek?, Nyelv és Tudomány (February 21, 2013)
Pesquisadores defendem uso das mídias sociais na ciência, Jornal do Brasil (February 20, 2013)
Comment les “trolls” radicalisent l’esprit des lecteurs sur Internet, Le Mode (February 14, 2013)
Online comments ‘undermine scientific research,’ The Telegraph (February 14, 2013)
Trolls win: It might be better to shut off comments, Science 2.0 (February 14, 2013)
Academic tone-trolling: How does interactivity impact online science communication?, Scientific American(January 28, 2013)
To find out more about research in the scimep lab visit here or follow the lab on Twitter at @scimeplab.