Examining South-East University Students' Optimisation of the Feedback Tool of the Online Newspaper

Abstract

The process of sending, and having, reactions to contents of traditional newspapers published used to be tortuous, but with the online newspaper readers’ responses to published contents can almost be instantaneously posted online. This current ease has however raised the question as to whether the tool through which users can post reactions online are appreciated and optimised by readers. This study therefore looks into this optimisation within the frameworks of the agenda-setting theory and the democratic-participant theory. A total of 383 students drawn from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka and the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, were surveyed. At the end, findings showed that 76% of users read comments succeeding news stories on online newspapers, 55% of online newspapers readers do not utilise the comment box adjourning contents to express their thoughts. While 39% of the comments read by online newspaper users relate to the stories they are adjoining, 41% of respondents say the comments they post on the message board have a direct bearing on the story in question. It was also found that 56% of respondents believe that the process of posting reactions to stories published on web pages is still not easy.