Abstract Koreans mainly consume online news through a few Internet portals, so issues such as manipulation of online news comments can become significant social problems in Korea. To respond to the May 2018 Druking opinion-rigging scandal, Naver—the leading Internet portal in Korea—changed its rule of ordering online news comments from most reactions to reverse chronological, with the latest appearing first. This study examined the impact of the new rule of ordering online news comments by using online news comments data from before and after Naver's rule change. Difference-in-difference estimation was conducted to examine the consequences of the new rule of ordering online news comments. Although the results show that the rule change did not impact the number of online news comments, the number of upvotes and downvotes significantly decreased, and the distributions of upvotes and downvotes were spread evenly rather than skewed to one side.

中文翻译：

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规则改变会导致活动改变吗？韩国网络新闻评论实证研究

摘要 韩国人主要通过少数几个门户网站消费在线新闻，因此操纵在线新闻评论等问题可能成为韩国的重大社会问题。为了应对 2018 年 5 月的 Druking 舆论操纵丑闻，韩国领先的互联网门户网站 Naver 将在线新闻评论的排序规则从大多数反应改为反向时间顺序，最新的最先出现。本研究使用 Naver 规则更改前后的在线新闻评论数据，研究了在线新闻评论排序新规则的影响。进行了差异中的差异估计以检查订购在线新闻评论的新规则的后果。虽然结果显示规则变化没有影响在线新闻评论数量，但赞成和反对的数量显着减少，