Does rule change cause activity change? An empirical study of online news comments in Korea

Abstract

Koreans mainly consume online news through a few Internet portals, so issues such as manipulation of online news comments can become significant social problems in Korea. To respond to the May 2018 Druking opinion-rigging scandal, Naver-the leading Internet portal in Korea-changed its rule of ordering online news comments from most reactions to reverse chronological, with the latest appearing first. This study examined the impact of the new rule of ordering online news comments by using online news comments data from before and after Naver's rule change. Difference-in-difference estimation was conducted to examine the consequences of the new rule of ordering online news comments. Although the results show that the rule change did not impact the number of online news comments, the number of upvotes and downvotes significantly decreased, and the distributions of upvotes and downvotes were spread evenly rather than skewed to one side.