Amid the ongoing online rigging scandal involving ex-members of the ruling Democratic Party, a study has shown that readers’ comments on news portals can heavily influence one’s perception of an individual or current affairs -- regardless of whether they have any logic or substance.

Three ex-members of the ruling party, all currently in custody, are accused of using a computer program that artificially ramps up the number of clicks on “agree” -- South Korea’s dominant search engine Naver’s equivalent of Facebook’s “Like” -- for two specific comments on news stories carried by the online portal Naver.

The comments are said to have been critical of the Moon administration’s decision to form a South-North joint women’s hockey team for the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games back in February.

As Naver automatically puts the comments that get the most “agree” responses at the top of the comments feed for each news story, the former members misled people to think that the two comments, which were against the first-ever joint Korean women’s ice hockey team, were the most popular opinions on the matter.

Many Koreans only read the top comments on the feeds, as it takes time to scroll down and read all of the posted comments.

So how influential are these “most-agreed” comments that are placed on top of a web portal’s comment feeds?

According to a local study, they are extremely influential -- and therefore dangerous.

The study, conducted by Chungnam National University’s psychology department, surveyed some 170 Koreans after showing them a news article about an anonymous lawmaker, as well as readers’ comments on the story.

To some of the participants, the researchers only showed the comments that were favorable towards the lawmaker, whose identity was undisclosed in the news story. To another group of the participants, the scholars only provided comments that were critical of the politician.

The results showed that those who were only exposed to the critical comments on the lawmaker formed a negative perception on the lawmaker, in spite of the politician being anonymous in the news story, and said they were unlikely to vote for him or her in future elections. At the same time, those who only read the positive comments developed a positive perception about the person, and said they were interested in voting for the politician.

The researchers pointed out that many of the comments they showed to the participants did not have any logic, context or substance. For example, some of the negative comments were simply personal attacks against the lawmaker. They were as short as “Please don’t make any more public appearances,” or “You are going to ruin this country.”

The scholars concluded that such comments were influential enough to form one’s opinion on the lawmaker -- in spite of his or her anonymity.

Yet the participants’ reaction changed almost immediately when they were informed that the critical comments they had just been exposed to were in fact manipulated. The participant told scholars that they have changed their minds and said were now relatively more interested in voting for the person.

“This shows that comments that have no logic, and even groundless personal attacks against public figures, can be highly influential on one’s perception of others and the issues that surround her or him,” said Chun Woo-young, a psychology professor who led the research at Chungnam National University.

“At the same time, the study shows that it’s important to inform the audience when it is found that certain comments‘ popularity have been manipulated, because once people are aware of this, they do change their perceptions.”

This is not the first time that Korea is being swept up in an opinion rigging scandal. In 2013, the prosecution concluded that members of the nation’s spy agency posted some 1.2 million Twitter messages in 2012 to try to sway public opinion in favor of Park Geun-hye, who was a presidential candidate at the time. She eventually won the election that year.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)