This study observes two relevant issues in today’s media ecosystem: incivility in online news comments and media bias during election periods. By analyzing 84 stories and 4670 comments published during the 2017 presidential election in Chile, we observed the extent to which news commenters addressed political figures using uncivil discourse, and the extent to which incivility and media bias were related in comments discussing the election. Results indicate incivility in comment sections of Chilean news outlets is higher than that found in the Global North, and the levels of uncivil speech are even higher when the conversation mentions female politicians, especially former president Michelle Bachelet. We also found a relationship between media bias and user bias—stories positively biased toward current president Sebastián Piñera were associated with more positive comments about him. Implications and future research are discussed.

这项研究观察了当今媒体生态系统中的两个相关问题：在线新闻评论的不活跃性和选举期间的媒体偏见。通过分析2017年智利总统大选期间发表的84个故事和4670条评论，我们观察到新闻评论员使用不文明的话语对政治人物发表讲话的程度，以及在讨论选举的评论中不活跃和媒体偏见的程度。结果表明，智利新闻媒体的评论部分的不活跃程度高于全球北部地区，当谈话中提到女性政客，尤其是前总统米歇尔·巴切莱特时，不文明言论的水平甚至更高。我们还发现了媒体偏见和用户偏见之间的关系-对现任总统塞巴斯蒂安·皮涅拉（SebastiánPiñera）正面偏向的故事与对他的正面评价有关。讨论了影响和未来的研究。