The materials and datasets accompanying the paper "Mitigating Perceived Polarization by Acknowledging Subjectivity: An Experimental Study of the Impact of Differently Phrasing Comments in Online News Discussions." In this paper we report on an experiment in which we aimed to reduce perceived polarization in online news discussions by inserting subjectivity markers: explicit acknowledgements that a statement represents the writer’s perspective, e.g., “I think that is not true”.

Data files:

RawDataset – SPSS raw datafile RestructuredDataset – SPSS restructured data file from variables to cases BackstructuredDataset – SPSS backstructured data file from cases to variables CodingFirtRound – Excell with the coding of the two independent coders SPSS Syntax R code

Supplemental material

Questionnaire Codebook Stimuli Information letter and informed consent Preregistration

Structure data package: The codebook clarifies the connection between the questionnaire items and the dataset variables. From the raw dataset, we made the restructured dataset which also includes the calculated variables, see the SPSS Syntax. This structured dataset was the basis for the analyses in R. The backstructured dataset is based on the restructured dataset and needed for conducting the repeated measures mediation with SPSS MEMORE. The coding dataset was also analyzed in R, and provides the input for the column “CodingComments” in the restructured and backstructured datasets.

Ethical clearance: This study was reviewed by an ethical committee and received ethical clearance.

Method: Experiment through Qualtrics software Universe: The final sample consisted of 175 participants (MAge = 25.17, SDAge = 10.64; 50.9% female). Most participants, 48%, completed University education, 20.6% indicated they studied higher vocational education, 1.1% finished a post-secondary vocational education, and 30.3% completed high school. More than half the sample (61.2%) indicated that they read the online news once or twice a day, 29.7% did so once or twice a week, 8% once or twice a month, and 1.1% indicated they never did. Participants also regularly read online news discussions: 19.4% did so once or twice a day, 26.9% indicated once or twice a week, 22.9% once or twice a month, 6.9% once or twice a year, and 24% indicated they never did. Lastly, reacting to these online news discussions was rather rare in the sample: the large majority (92%) said they never did, 6.9 indicated sometimes, and only 1.1% commented frequently.