WikiLeaks comments: a study of responses to articles

Purpose - The study aims to explore WikiLeaks' worldwide impact amongst readers of three online newspapers, as expressed through reader comments. There are three primary research questions: are there differences between the three online newspapers concerning the factual information in the comments, the linguistic characteristics of the comments, and the rhetorical and style elements of the comments? Design/methodology/approach - The study focused on three online newspapers: The New York Times in the USA, The Guardian in the UK and Ynet in Israel, all popular channels of communication in their countries. The researcher examined the comments relating to WikiLeaks and conducted a content analysis on a sample of the comments. Findings - The main findings suggest that most of the comments were written in an emotional style and with pathos. However there are major differences between comments written to The New York Times and to Ynet. Research limitations/implications - This research is limited by the extent to which it can be generalised, as it focuses only on WikiLeaks comments written before 1 December 2010. Originality/value - This paper is the first known exhaustive study that concentrates on WikiLeaks comments. The research findings may encourage further exploration into the nature of the relationship between media texts and reactions to them.