2. 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
2
3. Internet post web 2.0…
User Generated Content (UGC)
Video
Photos
Eye-witness reports
Blogs
Tweets
The comment
3
5. News = one-time resource
Increase page impressions?
Advertisers?
Increase reach?
Sentiment analysis?
How to better serve the audience?
5
6. Feedback
Participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006)
Rewriting the relationship between
news provider and news consumer
Mutual shaping of news (Nielsen,
2014)
6
7. Deliberative democracy
Comments and interactivity
extend the deliberative and
democratic potential of the
public sphere (Weber, 2014)
7
8. Deliberative democracy
Newsworthiness affects:
1. participation levels of the readers
2. interactivity in the comments section
Both story & comments have to be interesting
8
9. ‘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
9
10. ‘Nasty’ readers
10
September 2013, website
Popular Science closed
comments
‘trolls and spambots … can
be bad for science’
11. The ‘Nasty Effect’
Anderson et al (2013) for The
Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication
11
12. 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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13. ‘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
13
14. ‘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
14
16. YouTube’s comment problem
‘home to the worst commenters
on the internet — racist, cruel,
idiotic, nonsensical, and barely
literate’
Tate, 2012, Wired
16
20. 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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23. 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
23
24. 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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25. 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
25
26. 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 Press
Suzanne 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
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