An Exploration of Spiral of Silence in Online News Comments: Characteristics of Four Flow Patterns of Users’ Comments

Abstract To address prior methodological, contextual, and conceptual gaps in research on the spiral of silence (SOS), we investigated whether SOS manifests in online news comments where public opinions naturally emerge and examined the impact of these comments on public opinion. To analyze the progression of comments, we adopted a novel approach to time-series analysis—previously confined to social media—by implementing the dynamic time warp (DTW) technique. Data were collected from 47,845 comments on 281 online news articles related to three controversial topics published on a Korean portal site. Using DTW, we categorized comment patterns into four clusters across all topics: Contentious, Parallel, Overwhelming, and Gradual gap. A key observation was that minority opinions did not consistently follow a predictable path but rather displayed varied patterns. This indicates that SOS is selectively relevant in online discussions, with various factors influencing how minority opinions are expressed and shape public opinion. However, over a longer timeframe, the Contentious type, where minority views remained strong, significantly decreased in later discussions compared with earlier ones. Moreover, the current study corroborates previous research on the influence of initial comments. The pattern of comment flows is also influenced by factors such as click speech, neutral comments, and age.