Abstract

This study began with a question of whether the existing social buttons are able to evaluate the quality of news comments. Most social buttons adopt a holistic approach by using only one button. The current simplified method of evaluating news comments makes it difficult to reflect at least two different perspectives of information value—utilitarian and hedonic. Having only single button muddles the reasons why people recommended the news comment and complicates efforts to assess the quality of comments. To address this problem, social buttons for a system of online news comments need to undergo improvements to permit proper assessment of comments and of their informational value. This research will identify the problems social buttons pose for news comments and also will design and evaluate solutions to these problems through a design workshop. We adopted design science as a research method and will develop and evaluate a new button design in an iterative manner. We found through literature reviews two important dimensions of comment value, informational value and sentimental value, that will be accommodated by the newly proposed social button.

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