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Today, online malicious comments are serious issues. They can cause psychological distress and suicide of victims. Although prior studies have focused on the role of anonymity as a major factor in making these comments, results of these studies have been inconsistent. On the other hand, the need for attention from others can provide an alternative explanation for such malicious comments. However, this perspective has been rarely studied. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate effects of anonymity and need for attention on posting malicious comments online and compare these two factors, resolving dark sides of online interaction.

This study obtained 327 questionnaires of Facebook users through a survey and analyzed the research model using partial least squares (PLS) regression.

Results of this study revealed that the need for attention affected malicious comments through partial mediation of neutralization. On the other hand, anonymity did not significantly affect malicious comments.

This study has the following academic implications. First, we empirically examined the critical influence of need for attention on making malicious comments online based on the impression management theory. Second, this study revealed that the influence of need for attention on making malicious comments was partially mediated by neutralization. Third, this study may offer an explanation for contradicting findings on the role of anonymity in the phenomenon of posting malicious comments online.

Practical implications of this study are as follows. First, SNS platforms can limit activities of persons who post malicious comments frequently. Second, this study suggests that a notice is needed to inform the seriousness and harmful consequences of malicious comments. Third, Facebook practitioners should be aware that low anonymity may not reduce malicious comments.

This study quantitatively examined the effect of need for attention on malicious comments based on the impression management theory. It provides a fact that individuals who want to attract attention from others would write malicious comments through neutralization.

This study aimed to empirically examine the effectiveness of disclosing user comment history without disclosing personal identity as a nudge policy to refrain users from posting malicious content online.

The authors collected the number of comments and posters from the leading portal website in South Korea, Naver.com. To causally investigate the impacts of the new nudge policy on the number of comments and posters, the authors used the regression discontinuity design (RDD) approach.

The authors found that the new policy reduced all types of comments, including the number of malicious comments, self-deleted comments and current comments. This resulted in an overall decrease in the total number of posted comments, which is considered a side effect. In addition, the authors found that the effect of the nudge policy, which disclosed user comment history, has a stronger effect on older female users than their counterparts.

The study findings extend the current knowledge on a nudge policy being implemented by a website as a means to reduce malicious online content and how it impacts user content posting behaviors.

Expressions of pride may elicit others’ envy. In the consumer context, prior research has repeatedly demonstrated that such envy significantly affects consumers’ attitudinal and behavioural responses towards the object of envy. This paper aims to investigate whether this pride-envy relationship is bi-directional. Does being envied by others affect consumers’ self-directed feelings of pride, as well as their subsequent attitude towards a product (i.e. the object of envy)?

Three experiments examined how emotional reactions of envy from others may influence consumers’ subsequent affective and attitudinal responses towards their own product or purchase. The first experimental study (n = 129) examined whether exposure to benign envy from others evokes higher levels of authentic pride and positively influences product attitude. The second experiment (n = 159) investigated whether exposure to malicious envy from others evokes high levels of hubristic pride, and therefore, negatively influences product attitude. The third study (n = 80) was a quasi-field experiment seeking to provide further empirical support for the relationship between benign (vs malicious) envy and authentic (vs hubristic) pride and their effects on attitude.

The first experiment showed that when participants observed expressions of benign envy towards them, they expressed authentic pride, which ultimately increased positive attitudes towards the product. The second experiment showed that when participants observed expressions of malicious envy towards them, they expressed hubristic pride, which, in turn, reduced positive attitudes towards the product. The effect of malicious envy was further moderated by susceptibility to social influence, whereby the indirect effect of malicious envy on product attitudes was only significant among participants with high susceptibility. The third experiment demonstrated the relationship between benign (vs malicious) envy and authentic (vs hubristic) pride and the effects on attitude in a quasi-field study.

The present paper aims to fill a research gap by showing how being the recipient of others’ malicious or benign envy affects consumers’ self-directed feelings of pride, as well as their attitude towards a product that is the object of envy.

The current research is among the first to show that the emotional expressions of other consumers can influence existing consumers’ affective responses and attitudes towards a product. These findings highlight the importance of building a positive culture and community around brands and products, whereby other consumers’ consumption of the brand or product is perceived positively.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical evidence demonstrating that others’ expression of benign (malicious) envy may lead to the self-feeling of authentic (hubristic) pride, which has a downstream effect on attitude towards the product.

This study aims to explore scientific discourses on vaccination in YouTube comments using the Connectivism theory as a foundational guide in the inquiry of understanding knowledge seeking and sharing. The authors sought to understand how individuals share and seek information by using external sources through URL links to validate their arguments.

Using content analysis, the authors extracted and analysed 584 random comments with URL links from eight YouTube videos scientifically addressing the purpose of vaccines. The comments were coded by stance (pro, anti, and neutral) and the type of resource to observe how their links were used.

The results showed that URL links were composed of quotes, questions, and opinions. Many sources came from research papers, conspiracy websites, or other videos. Some of the comments did not accurately reflect the information from research papers and showed little scientific reasoning. This suggests the need for critical evaluation among individuals when finding information online.

The findings can be expanded to explore different types of information literacy practices in the comment section of social media for both informal and formal environments.

YouTube is useful in fostering scientific discourse and information-seeking/sharing practices among individuals. However, considering the inaccuracy of content deliverance, educators and individuals will need to consider how to teach/conduct information literacy skills when implementing social media for educational purposes.

Only a few studies have conducted research on comments using URL links, the originality of sources and how the sources were used in argumentation.

Recent research on word-of-mouth (WOM) has presented consistent evidence on the importance of secondary WOM (sWOM) on online user-generated content (UGC) and on diffusion of positive and negative commercial information. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what motivates consumers to spread, via electronic WOM communication, negative information about commercial entities adversity using malicious verbal narratives. Based on concepts related to the joy of pain (schadenfreude) and gloating behavior the authors propose a set of hypotheses designed to test two key moderators (perceived deservingness and entity’s status) as well as the process of spiteful dissemination like content assimilation, dissemination time and duration.

The research consists on a series of four studies using different research methods (surveys and experiments) and a mix of quantitative and qualitative analyses.

Results show that actively communicating about others’ adversity (i.e. gloating behavior) provides an outlet to the passive observation of others’ adversity (i.e. schadenfreude feelings). Results indicate that schadenfreude and gloating are linked to the perceived deservingness of a commercial entity and entity status (the tall poppy syndrome). Results also show that malicious feelings and gloating behavior cause consumers to disseminate information more widely, more rapidly, for a longer period and frequently distort its content.

The findings contribute to literature on WOM by introducing an approach that highlights the potential negative effects of WOM on the dissemination of commercial information that might harm the relevant commercial entity’s reputation and goodwill.

This study illuminates the prevalence of negative rhetoric in WOM and supports the theory schadenfreude motives as a trigger for gloating behavior in the form of disseminating negative, malicious and intense WOM regarding commercial setbacks. This research is the first to examine and demonstrates that when it comes to WOM communication, schadenfreude feelings and gloating behavior might play a central role in the dissemination of negative information and the two constructs’ role in understanding infostorms, the sudden flow of large quantities of negative WOM using strong gleeful exultation. This study is the first to examine these phenomena in the business setting.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dark side of news community forums: the proliferation of opinion manipulation trolls. In particular, it explores the idea that a user who is called a troll by several people is likely to be one. It further demonstrates the utility of this idea for detecting accused and paid opinion manipulation trolls and their comments as well as for predicting the credibility of comments in news community forums.

The authors are aiming to build a classifier to distinguish trolls vs regular users. Unfortunately, it is not easy to get reliable training data. The authors solve this issue pragmatically: the authors assume that a user who is called a troll by several people is likely to be such, which are called accused trolls. Based on this assumption and on leaked reports about actual paid opinion manipulation trolls, the authors build a classifier to distinguish trolls vs regular users.

The authors compare the profiles of paid trolls vs accused trolls vs non-trolls, and show that a classifier trained to distinguish accused trolls from non-trolls does quite well also at telling apart paid trolls from non-trolls.

The troll detection works even for users with about 10 comments, but it achieves the best performance for users with a sizable number of comments in the forum, e.g. 100 or more. Yet, there is not such a limitation for troll comment detection.

The approach would help forum moderators in their work, by pointing them to the most suspicious users and comments. It would be also useful to investigative journalists who want to find paid opinion manipulation trolls.

The authors can offer a better experience to online users by filtering out opinion manipulation trolls and their comments.

The authors propose a novel approach for finding paid opinion manipulation trolls and their posts.

The purpose of this paper is twofold, first, to discuss the current and future issues around post-publication open peer review. Second, to highlight some of the main protagonists and platforms that encourages open peer review, pre-and post-publication.

The first part of the paper aims to discuss the facilitators and barriers that will enable and prevent academics engaging with the new and established platforms of scholarly communication and review. These issues are covered with the intention of proposing further dialogue within the academic community that ultimately address researchers’ concerns, whilst continuing to nurture a progressive approach to scholarly communication and review. The paper will continue to look at the prominent open post-publication platforms and tools and discuss whether in the future it will become a standard model.

The paper identifies several problems, not exclusive to open peer review that could inhibit academics from being open with their reviews and comments of other’s research. Whilst identifies opportunities to be had by embracing a new era of academic openness.

The paper summarises key platforms and arguments for open peer review and will be of interest to researchers in different disciplines as well as the wider academic community wanting to know more about scholarly communications and measurement.

This paper looks at many of the new platforms that have been previously ignored and discusses issues relating to open peer review that have only been touched on in brief by other published research.

This case reviews the development of Dianping. After seeing Zagat's unique business model in the United States, founder Zhang Tao found that he could bring it to China and bring about local innovation. At the beginning of its establishment, the collection and promotion of comment content was the major challenge for Dianping. At the same time, Dianping faced legal issues. To solve these problems, the review mechanism of Dianping was designed to a certain extent to ensure the fairness of the review. With the advent of the mobile Internet era, Dianping began to develop a new business model. Relying on its high-quality “word-of-mouth” content and mass basis, Dianping launched group buying, online restaurant ordering, and other businesses. Dianping has always been open to strategic partners. Since 2015, Dianping has undergone historical changes, merging with Meituan. Since then, Dianping has continuously adjusted its business and organizational structure to maintain its competitiveness. Gradually, Dianping has changed from an independent business entity into a business unit of Meituan.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal a symbol – “however” that authors are very interested in, but few research studies pay attention to the existing literature. The authors aim to further insight its function.

In this research, the authors selected 3,329 valid comments on articles published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) from 2015 to 2020 as the research objects. The authors showed the length distribution of reviewers' comments. In what follows, the authors analyzed the general distribution of words in comments and reviewer comments’ position to understand reviewers' comments qualitatively in word dimension. Specially, the authors analyzed functions of “however” and “but”, words that authors are most concerned with. In addition, the authors also discussed some factors, which may be related to “however,” that reflect reviewers' praise through regression analysis.

The authors found that there are marked differences in the length of reviewers' comments under different review rounds. By mapping the reviewers' comments to different sections, the authors found that reviewers are deeply concerned to methods section. Adjectives and adverbs in comments written in different sections of the manuscripts also have different characteristics. The authors tried to interpret the turning function of “however” in scientific communication. Its frequency of use is related to reviewers' identities, specifically academic status. More precisely, junior researchers use “however” in praise more frequently than senior researchers do.

The linguistic feature and function of “however” and “but” in the reviewers' comments of the rejected manuscripts may be different from accepted papers and also worth exploring. Regrettably, the authors cannot obtain the peer review comments of rejected manuscripts. This point may limit the conclusion of the investigation of this article.

Overall, the survey results revealed some language features of reviewers' comments, which could provide a basis of future endeavors for many reviewers in open peer review (OPR) field. Specially, the authors also put forward an interesting symbol to examine the review comments, “however”, for the first time.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how to use customer spontaneous comments to identify which aspects influence the overall customer satisfaction with restaurant services from a nonlinear perspective.

The authors collected data from 399 spontaneous comments about a chain of fast-food restaurants in Brazil. The comments are freely available on the TripAdvisor portal and were extracted and classified according to seven dimensions related to the quality of services: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, quality of the food and price. Next, the authors combine the critical incident technique (CIT) and the penalty-reward contrast analysis (PRCA) to investigate the nonlinear relationship between service quality assessment and overall customer satisfaction.

The method of integrating CIT with PRCA explains 64.7% of the variation in the customer's assessment of the services provided (RAdj2 = 0.647). This shows that spontaneous comments from customers are related to their overall satisfaction with the service provided. Besides, the findings suggest that consumers tend to comment more about positive than negative experiences regarding aspects related to food, attendants' empathy and service assurance, and more negative comments about aspects related to responsiveness and price. However, it was found that negative comments have a stronger influence on overall satisfaction than positive comments.

Using comments available for free on the Internet and evaluating how positive and negative comments can jointly influence customer satisfaction, the proposed methodology demonstrates how restaurants can use their customers' spontaneous comments to identify critical aspects to be managed and improved. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study presenting how restaurants can use customer spontaneous comments, freely available on the internet, to identify the relevance of different aspects of the services provided from a nonlinear perspective. In addition, the present study shows that although customers spontaneously tend to share more positive than negative comments about restaurant services, events related to negative experiences have a stronger influence on overall satisfaction.