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Source: Journal Citation ReportsTM from ClarivateTM 2022

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues Open access
Journal Impact FactorTM (2022) 1.7
Journal Citation IndicatorTM (2022) 0.42
Received: 2018-03-17  |  Accepted: 2018-06-15  |  Published: 2018-06-30

Title

Peculiarities of anonymous comments’ management: a case study of Lithuanian news portals


Abstract

In the world of today's information technologies, data may spread through cyber space at the speed of lightning. News portals constantly update the information available at their disposal by posting new articles. In order to attract new readers and to retain existing ones, in addition to focussing on publishing quality content, portal managers work on continuously improving their sites. These websites may have various interactive features, among them the opportunity to comment on an article. In some news portals, the number of anonymous comments is particularly high. The activities of online commenters and the issues related to their anonymity have always generated heated discussion owing to a number of reasons, including the content of the comments, the right of the commenters to remain anonymous and the extent to which the portal manager could be held liable. News portals equipped with an anonymous commenting function give rise to a culture of online bullying and hate-mongering where the cyber-criminals feel immune from punishment and existing control measures are insufficient for addressing the problem. The advocates of anonymous commenting argue that it promotes freedom of expression and portal administrators claim they can control defamatory and offensive anonymous comments by deleting them. The article discusses the theoretical aspects of anonymity, anonymous commenting and anonymous comments. Based on a case study of the most popular news portals in Lithuania, and, in particular, on a comparative analysis of the privacy policy and the environment for commenting in three of them, the authors offer empirical data on the ratio between the number of comments and that of the commenters. The main purpose of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of anonymous comments’ management of the news portals that enjoy the greatest popularity in Lithuania.


Keywords

anonymous comments, hate speech, privacy, news portals, internet


JEL classifications

D80 , M15 , M10


URI

http://jssidoi.org/jesi/article/189


DOI


HAL


Pages

875-889


This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Authors

Limba, Tadas
Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania https://www.mruni.eu
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Šidlauskas, Aurimas
Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania https://www.mruni.eu
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Journal title

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues

Volume

5


Number

4


Issue date

June 2018


Issue DOI


ISSN

ISSN 2345-0282 (online)


Publisher

VšĮ Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, Vilnius, Lithuania

Cited

Google Scholar

Article views & downloads

HTML views: 4655  |  PDF downloads: 1745

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