Seminal contributions to the study of nation‐building emphasized the role of newspapers in the development of national consciousness. But do such theories apply in the modern context of online news sites, especially in diverse, postcolonial societies? Because online news sites contain forums for reader comments, this provides an opportunity to assess the relationship between exposure to media content and citizen sentiments. We investigate the extent to which a major online news site makes ethnic categories salient in sub‐Saharan Africa's largest country, Nigeria. Analysing more than 35,000 news articles and 300,000 comments, we find that commenters frequently broadcast strong expressions of subnational ethnic animus in response to a wide variety of stories. In particular, the use of some ethnic categories in headlines is associated with more than 40 percentage point increase in the probability of at least one reader making an ethnic‐based comment. Extending the analysis to South Africa, we show that these patterns generalize beyond Nigeria. By amplifying ethnic animus, ‘national’ newspapers may impede nation‐building efforts.

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在线报纸会促进或破坏分裂社会中的国家建设吗？来自非洲的证据

对国家建设研究的开创性贡献强调了报纸在民族意识发展中的作用。但是，这种理论是否适用于在线新闻站点的现代环境，尤其是在多样化的后殖民社会中？因为在线新闻网站包含供读者发表评论的论坛，这提供了一个机会来评估媒体内容的曝光量与公民情绪之间的关系。我们调查了撒哈拉以南非洲最大国家尼日利亚的主要在线新闻网站在多大程度上使种族类别更加突出。通过分析超过35,000条新闻文章和300,000条评论，我们发现评论者经常广播次国家种族动植物的强烈表达，以回应各种各样的故事。特别是，在头条新闻中使用某些种族类别会使至少一个读者发表基于种族的评论的可能性提高40个百分点以上。将分析扩展到南非，我们表明这些模式在尼日利亚以外地区普遍存在。通过扩大种族仇视，