The Exploring the Social Media Culture of Commenting: Youtube Users Sentiments of “Misinformation” on International News Media Sphere.

Abstract

In the 21st century, the Internet has continued to play a role in breaking news and especially inemergency situations. Social media as an alternate public sphere provides users a platform to seekout clarification, debate, and spread information. Information that might be perceived to be misinfor-mation has become a challenge in both the local news and the international media sphere. Althoughdifferent scholars have debated this aspect, a review of the relevant literature indicates that few scho-lars have explored this issue in line with the culture of commenting. The culture of news consumersin the digital age shapes the development of news stories as they seek to find a credible source ofinformation for consumption. This study recognizes that the assumption of misinformation is a verycomplex problem that is subject to diverse cultural analysis and incessant discourse among experts.Therefore, this study explored the sentiments of YouTube users in the international media sphere inregards to perceived misinformation and the social media culture of commenting. The study investi-gated YouTube as a communicative platform through the analysis of the content of YouTube chan-nels owned by the media. The study utilized ExportComments.com, a data extraction tool to extractboth quantitative and qualitative data from the YouTube channels, and conducted a thematic contentqualitative analysis of the comments. This study contributes to the overall public sphere theory. It isimperative for the media to adapt to pro-truth while audience engagement and news media literacyare vital in the age of fake news.