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