Previous research suggests that distinct characteristics of news articles, such as their news factors, account for the different participation rates in comment sections as well as the degree of interactivity among the discussants. In this study, this assumption is tested in the Facebook environment and extended to the analysis of how news factors (i.e., event characteristics) and illustration factors (i.e., characteristics resulting from a specific journalistic editing) of news articles predict theinclusivenessof discussions, as well as the occurrence ofcivility, rationality, anddeliberative interactivityin user comments. A content analysis of 619 news articles and 11,218 related user comments on nine nation-wide Facebook news pages reveals that the news factorscontroversy, latent conflict, contravention, obtrusiveness, andimpactparticularly account for specific discussion qualities. The results also show that the illustration factorsemotional language/visualizations, slant, andconversational promptsaffect the deliberative quality of the discussions.
