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Online comments#mac201

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In the beginning, the technology gods created the Internet and saw that it was good. Here, at last, was a public sphere with unlimited potential for reasoned debate and the thoughtful exchange of ideas, an enlightening conversational bridge across the many geographic, social, cultural, ideological and economic boundaries that ordinarily separate us in life, a way to pay bills without a stamp. Then someone invented “reader comments” and paradise was lost.- Brossard and Scheufele, 2013

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Internet post web 2.0…

User Generated Content (UGC) Video Photos Eye-witness reports Blogs Tweets The comment

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Virtual communities

WELL

Rheingold

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News = one-time resource

Increase page impressions?

Advertisers?

Increase reach?

Sentiment analysis?

How to better serve the audience?

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Feedback

Participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006)

Rewriting the relationship between news provider and news consumer

Mutual shaping of news (Nielsen, 2014)

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Deliberative democracy

Comments and interactivity extend the deliberative and democratic potential of the public sphere (Weber, 2014)

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Deliberative democracy

Newsworthiness affects:1. participation levels of the readers

2. interactivity in the comments section

Both story & comments have to be interesting

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‘Nasty’ readers

In the beginning, the technology gods created the Internet and saw that it was good. Here, at last, was a public sphere with unlimited potential for reasoned debate and the thoughtful exchange of ideas, an enlightening conversational bridge across the many geographic, social, cultural, ideological and economic boundaries that ordinarily separate us in life, a way to pay bills without a stamp.

Then someone invented “reader comments” and paradise was lost. - Brossard and Scheufele, 2013

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‘Nasty’ readers

September 2013, website Popular Science closed comments

‘trolls and spambots … can be bad for science’

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The ‘Nasty Effect’

Anderson et al (2013) for The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

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The ‘Nasty Effect’

1,183 participants read a fictitious blog article about nanosilver

Half of the sample was exposed to civil reader comments and the other half to rude ones

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‘This story stinks’

"Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought,"

Brossard, 2013, New York Times

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‘This story stinks’

The ‘emerging online media landscape has created a new public forum

without the traditional social norms and self-regulation that typically

govern our in-person exchanges — and that medium, increasingly, shapes

both what we know and what we think we know’

Brossard, 2013, New York Times

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YouTube’s comment problem

‘home to the worst commenters on the internet — racist, cruel, idiotic, nonsensical, and barely literate’ Tate, 2012, Wired

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Huffington Post gets real

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Anonymous or identifiable comments?

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Balance

News sites must strike a delicate balance when deciding whether to allow those who comment to remain anonymous: To attract users, sites want to make it as easy as possible for people to participate, and anonymity allows users to feel less inhibited when they comment Gsell in Neilesen, 2014

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Bassey Etim (2014) community manager New York Times

In the past, we did see real identity as the key to ensuring a more civil comments space. It makes perfect sense in theory – after all, who would say such awful, hateful things in public with their names and job titles attached?

Turns out the answer is: An enormous amount of people would say awful and hateful things with their names attached

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Bassey Etim (2014) community manager New York Times

And even worse, many great commenters with innocent reasons to withhold their identities begin to self-censor, and then abandon the comment threads entirely.

Real ID, in summation, may be the worst great idea the community industry has ever had.

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Summary

The internet as a ‘public sphere’ is problematic, despite initial enthusiasm

Comment communities can add value to a platform

Unmoderated/poorly moderated communities can be counter-productive

Ripe for abuse

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Sources Ashley A. Anderson, Dominique Brossard, Dietram A. Scheufele, Michael A. Xenos and Peter Ladwig (2013) ‘The “Nasty Effect:” Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 19, Issue 3, pages 373–387, http://dx.doi.org10.1111/jcc4.12009 Yochai Benkler (2006) The Wealth of Networks, New Haven C.T: Yale University Press.Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele (2013) ‘This Story Stinks’ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/this-story-stinks.html?_r=1& Lincoln Dahlberg (2011) ‘Re-constructing digital democracy: An outline of four “positions”’, New Media & Society, Vol 13, no 6, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444810389569 Lindsay Gsell (2009) ‘Comments Anonymous’, American Journalism Review, http://ajrarchive.org/article.asp?id=4681 Alfred Hermida and Neil Thurman (2008) ‘A Clash of Cultures: The Integration of User-Generated Content within Professional Journalistic Frameworks at British Newspaper Websites’, Journalism Practice, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 343-356, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17512780802054538 Alex Hern (2013) ‘Popular Science kills comments - while YouTube tries to fix them’ http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/25/popular-science-youtube-comments Henry Jenkins (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University PressSuzanne LaBarre (2013) ‘Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments’ http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/why-were-shutting-our-comments C. Seth Lewis (2012) “The Tension Between Professional Control and Open Participation.” Information, Communication & Society, 15 (6): 836–866.Carolyn E Nielsen (2014) ‘Coproduction or cohabitation: Are anonymous online comments on newspaper websites shaping news content?’, New Media & Society, Vol 16, No 3, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444813487958 Patrick (2014) ‘How CNN and The New York Times Moderate Comments’, http://www.managingcommunities.com/2014/07/17/how-cnn-and-the-new-york-times-moderate-comments/ Patrick Weber (2014) ‘Discussions in the comments section: Factors influencing participation and interactivity in online newspapers’ reader comments’, New Media & Society, Vol 16, No 6,http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444813495165