The Comment as the Unit of Analysis
In the Comment Edition you score individual citizen comments — not the posts they respond to
In the pilot you scored the initiating posts themselves — articles, clips, and statements published by media accounts and influencers. In the Second Edition the unit of analysis moves one layer down: you score the public comments ordinary citizens leave in response to news media reports across news sites, YouTube, Facebook, and X. The initiating post is context you read once; it is never scored.
Comments are where the health of democratic discourse actually lives. A polished article tells you little about how citizens treat each other; the thread beneath it tells you almost everything. Comment fields are also where hostility, solidarity, and cynicism surface most rawly — which is exactly what the four dimensions are built to capture.
What Counts as One Comment
Score the single comment in front of you — the whole of it, and nothing beyond it.
A reply is still one comment. Read the parent to know who is being addressed, but score only the reply.
The person a reply addresses is a fellow citizen in the thread. Empathy and Civility are owed to them.
Do not score the initiating post, other comments, images, or external links — only the words of this comment.
If a comment quotes or screenshots another, score how the author uses that material, not the material itself.
The Two-Step Reading Discipline
Every comment is read in two passes before you score anything:
Read the initiating post and, for a reply, the parent comment. Establish what is being discussed and who is being addressed. This pass is only to understand — resist scoring.
Re-read the comment on its own terms and score what is actually present in its words. Irony, shorthand, and slang are read in light of the context you established, but the evidence for every score must be inside the comment.
Use the initiating post to understand a comment, never to score it. A vicious comment under a reasonable article is still vicious; a compassionate comment under an inflammatory clip is still compassionate. Score the citizen, not the company they were placed in.
What You Never Code
Source Type — A Required Field
Every comment is tagged with the kind of account whose report it responds to. This single field lets the study compare discourse quality across very different information environments, so it must be recorded accurately.
Comments responding to established news organisations and public institutions — newspapers, broadcasters, wire services, and official accounts operating under editorial standards.
Comments responding to individual commentators, partisan pages, and independent creators who publish outside traditional editorial structures.
The Source Type is pre-populated in your sheet. Confirm it before you code; if it is obviously wrong, flag it to your supervisor rather than changing it silently. A mis-recorded Source Type corrupts the central comparison the whole study rests on.