How commenter-following shapes news exposure: homophily and selective exposure in naver news

Purpose Online news platforms increasingly incorporate social functions—such as a commenter-following feature—that can reshape how audiences encounter and engage with information. This study examines whether these commenter networks exhibit homophily (i.e. the tendency of like-minded individuals to connect) and whether they heighten selective exposure. Design/methodology/approach Naver News, a leading Korean news aggregator, introduced a commenter-following feature on April 7, 2022. Using a quasi-experimental dataset of 2,331,211 comments posted by 922 users on Naver News, we employed logistic regression and fixed-effects panel analyses to examine both the formation and consequences of the commenter-following network. Findings The results demonstrate that users with similar topical interests in comments and preferences for specific news outlets are significantly more likely to follow one another, revealing a robust homophily pattern. Furthermore, selective exposure—operationalized via an index comparing users' consumption of left- and right-leaning outlets—rose by approximately five percent after forming these networks. Originality/value This is the study to expand research on commenter-following networks from a social media context to a news context.