Reader Comments Agentive Power in COVID-19 Digital News Articles: Challenging Parascientific Information?

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an enormous stream of information. Parascientific digital communication pursued different avenues, from mainstream media news to social networking, at times combined. Likewise, citizens have developed new discourse practices, with readers as active participants who claim authority. Based on a corpus 500 reader comments Guardian, we analyse how build their authorial voice well agentive power and its implications. Methodologically, draw upon stance markers, depersonalisation strategies, heteroglossic the perspective discursive interpersonality. Our findings unearth that markers are central for authority produce content. Depersonalised also resorted, reinforcing readers’ external information mirrors expert scientific communication. Conclusions suggest strong citizen can either support articles, spreading parascientific information, or challenge them, therefore, contributing pseudoscientific messages.