ABSTRACT
New and social media are increasingly used by readers to engage and debate the boundaries of what they perceive to be their political community and the desirability of solidarity among each other. The group of social media commenters might still constitute a niche, yet it is growing and becoming more active on mainstream newspaper sites on social media, thus arousing the attention of large audiences. The responsiveness of commenters on Facebook and the degree to which they enter into an exchange of opinion was very high: 74.4% of all commenters responded to news content on the refugee crisis and only 25.6% of the users posted unrelated independent statements. Most of them, however, were still within the thematic context of the refugee crisis. The Facebook comment sections of mainstream newspaper sites offered citizens an opportunity for focused debates about the ‘refugee crisis’ through the exchange of a plurality of positions and arguments.
