Using the methods cross-case analysis and content analysis this dissertation investigated the characteristics of participatory journalism and conversation between citizen journalists in the period before and during the election campaign for the election of the mayor of Split in 2013. in five croatian news portal: 24 sata, Index, T-portal, Slobodna Dalmacija and Dalmacija News, and by determining the semantic orientation (SO) of comments performed manual sentiment analysis, exploring sentiments expressed toward candidates and their qualities: competence, politeness, responsibility, morality, appearance, patriotism and criminality. During the analysis dictionary was built with 4 913 words and phrases that express the sentiments toward politicians and their characteristics. Based on the structure of 604 conversations and analysis of 15 715 comments low argumentation and low interactivity of conversation were found, a it is concluded that the conversation between citizen journalists in the studied portals had a low level of public deliberation. Citizens journalists at all investigated portals expressed predominantly negative sentiments toward each other and toward the candidates, except in the case of Marijana Puljak. Comparison of the distribution of results for SO of comments showed that citizen journalists in the studied portals do not belong to the same population. News portals are also different from each other in relation to: the number of articles about the candidates, the number of comments on the candidates and the number of citizen journalists who participated in the conversation. Domination of newspaper articles and the number of comments on Željko Kerum is common for all the portals, and on almost all portals are observed that in the category Patriotism SDP candidate Ivo Baldasar got lowest score, and in the category Criminality HDZ candidate Vjekoslav Ivaniševic got lowest score. On two news portals that have published newspaper articles about all the candidates (Slobodna Dalmacija and Dalmatia News) correlation was found between election results and number of published articles about the candidates, the number of comments on the candidates, the number of citizen journalists who commented on the candidates and the number of citizen journalists positively or negatively oriented toward candidates. The results of this research in the cases of five croatian news portals showed that there is a relationship between participatory journalism and election results, and that conversation between citizen journalists is still far from the ideal of public deliberation that describes Habermas (1996).