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To Comment Or Not To Comment - Marie K. Shanahan
- 1. To Comment Or Not To Comment?
- 2. #EIJcomment
- 3. Comment Sections: The Good Examples culled from GateHouse Media
- 6. Comment Sections: Why You Should Care 1. Comments can affect what people think about your journalism 2. Incivility in the comments can affect what people take away from your journalism 3. Comments can build community 4. Comment sections can be a source of revenue
- 7. Comment Sections: State of the Space Closed Comment Sections Expanded Comment Sections Closed, then Re- Opened Comment Sections
- 8. Comment Sections: State of the Space
- 9. 32% of Internet users reported that they had posted a comment on an online news site. (Pew Research, 2010)
- 11. Engaging News Project To provide research-based techniques for engaging online audiences in commercially viable and democratically beneficial ways.
- 12. Reporter Involvement in Comments Design Partner with local news station Across 70 different political posts, we randomized whether: 1)Reporter engaged 2)Station engaged 3)No engagement Engagement was respectful, Results Reporter engagement … • Reduced incivility • Increased provision of evidence
- 13. Getting Involved in Comment Sections Journalistic Involvement: Two Views Comments are the purview of the site users and newsroom staff should not respond … Diakopoulos & Naaman, 2011, Towards quality discourse in online news comments. The tone changes simply because the user realizes someone … is listening Jon DeNunzio, Washington Post
- 15. Reporter Involvement in Comments Techniques to spark conversation and highlight productive comments: 1.Answer legitimate questions (e.g. “Good question Mandy…”) 2.Ask questions (e.g. “What are your thoughts on that?”) 3.Provide additional information (e.g. “Here’s a link to the bill text.”) 4.Encourage and highlight good discussion (e.g. “Tom, you bring up something interesting”)
- 16. Testimonials “I’ve had a really positive experience getting involved in the comments. It encourages me to look at the comments section more. The readers respond well when I go in and comment. They generally will thank me for my response.” -Jessica Parks, county reporter The Philadelphia “(Engaging News Project) put out a study that showed that having writers moderate and comment on their own stories improved the tenor of comments overall. A handful of reporters for the
- 17. Highlighting Comments • Highlighting strong comments – Example: Financial Times Our homepage has a box featuring “best comments” from our readers. We invite our journalists to make suggestions for the homepage box. If a comment posted on their story appears in the box, their article usually has a surge in traffic. -- Sarah Laitner, Financial Times
- 18. Seeding the Comments Research found: With 4 thoughtful comments and 1 unthoughtful comment, people left MORE thoughtful comments. With 1 thoughtful and 4 unthoughtful comments, people left LESS thoughtful comments. Sukumaran, A., Vezich, S., McHugh, M., & Nass, C. (2011). Normative influences on thoughtful online participation. In Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’11 (pp. 3401–3410). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. doi:10.1145/1978942.1979450 Could we use this insight to think about how to get comment sections off on the right foot?
- 19. Designing the Space Sukumaran, A., Vezich, S., McHugh, M., & Nass, C. (2011). Normative influences on thoughtful online participation. In Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’11 (pp. 3401–3410). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. doi:10.1145/1978942.1979450 Unthoughtful Design Thoughtful Design (a) Visually casual and informal (b) captcha with 1 neutral word (e.g. magenta, curtain) and 3 low thoughtful words (e.g. sloppy) (c) Comment box label = Got something to say?? (d) Comment box default text = Have your say here! (a) Formal and serious appearance (b) Captcha with 1 neutral word and 3 thoughtful words (e.g. understanding) (c) Comment box label = "Please enrich the discussion by adding your comments" (d) Comment box default text = "Please try to make your contributions as constructive as possible" Research found: Thoughtful Design = More Thoughtful Comments
- 22. Hartford Courant File Photo/Stephen Dunn
- 24. I’m using your comment section to…
- 25. What happens when we don’t monitor our online comment sections
- 26. Deep down, all of us have the potential to be a comment troll. A 2014 survey by YouGov found 30% of Americans admitted to engaging in "malicious online activity directed at somebody they didn't know.” Graphic by EFF.org/Hugh D'Andrade, via CC
- 27. Think online anonymity is the barrier to civility?
- 28. “Civility is emotional maturity.” -Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics by Susan Herbst, Temple University Press, 2010
- 29. #Technology #FAIL We need a better box. Is social media that box? photo credit: 4nitsirk via flickr cc
- 30. "One of the hardest things to do is scaling openness, whether you run an internet platform or whether you run a country.” -- Robert Kyncl, head of content and business operations at Source: “YouTube promises more measures to tame its comment trolls,” The Guardian. June 2, 2015
- 31. What do we really want in our comment sections?
- 33. Questions to ponder before initiating an online discussion
- 35. Denver Post
- 36. STL Public Radio
- 37. abc10.com
- 38. PRI on Facebook
- 39. Connie Schultz on Facebook
- 40. “Now that anyone can talk, the public sphere needs fewer authorities and more moderators... seems like a natural role for journalism.” – Jonathan Stray, Tinius Trust, May 2015
Editor's Notes
- Hashtag
- Conversation has moved to social media
- http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/232226/can-reporters-help-repair-online-comment-sections/
- I’ve been tracking the condition of online commenting since June 2008, when one Friday afternoon, a throng of community activists and city employees, led by Hartford’s mayor, staged a protest at the doorstep of my employer -- because of our online comment sections.
- The commenting climate hasn’t really improved since then. So many more places to comment. Toxic online commentary so pervasive it’s become a pop culture joke. Jimmy Kimmel regularly has Celebrities Read Mean Tweets about themselves The HBO series The Newsroom had anchor Will McAvoy on a “mission to civilize” ACN’s online commenters And just last month (august 2015)) summer E! network launched a new Friday night show that makes jokes out of guess what? “The Comment Section”
- The news sets off conversations. Freedom of expression. The internet enables people to be more of what they already are – amplified and archived. Trolls cause emotional disruption.
- Feral middle school boys take over. Toxicity left unchecked led to bullying, flaming, doxxing. Dealing with participation Inequality now – men dominate online commenting. Women don’t comment. Source: http://cs.stanford.edu/people/emmap1/cscw_paper.pdf
- Survey Source: https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/10/20/over-quarter-americans-admit-malicious-online-comm/ IMAGE: Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org) graphic created by EFF Senior Designer Hugh D'Andrade to illustrate EFF's work against patent trolls. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Trolls#/media/File:Troll-gold.png
- Anonmity/pseudonymn does enable some bad actors, but forcing people to use real names has not solve incivility/off topic comments. anonymous online speech is chipping away at the meta value of free speech/free expression. Ideas and opinions, specially archived ones can be used against us. Invisible Man - uses his power to scare and control people. The invisible man finds himself with tremendous power to fight and flee, a power which he uses with great delight. As he is invisible, no one can catch him, so there is no moral restraint on his actions. Toxicity when left unchecked
- Whether you are using real names or not, civility is emotional maturity. Comments still need to grow up. If so comments are a joke and just causing journalists headaches, why don’t we just get rid of them?
- The structures of most existing online commenting platforms enable too many bad actors. Technology fails us because human beings are subversive Tried employing technology - smart algorithms - to eliminate undesirable speech. Not foolproof. Existing comment sections not conducive to mobile, while Facebook and Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are. Mobile functionality important for participation going forward. Comment are conflict and collaboration, and community. Public discourse is good for democracy. Anonymous open – Topix Registration with email, pseudonyms allowed or real name required Social account / Social integration - Facebook commenting Third party - Disqus, Viafoura Kinja – anonymous with email registration Annotations – Medium, Quartz Subscribers only Pay per comment No comments on site, social media interactions only. Time restrictions: Commenting open on 1st day of publication only, or limited number of days, or unlimited. We need a better box. At bottom. On side. Annotations. Click to see. Sorted.
- http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/02/youtube-competition-freedom-of-speech-comment-trolls
- Talk to professional journalists – Some prefer the days when the audience couldn’t talk back. Comments are active participation. High engagement. Self motivated, but active. Full-name and Facebook sign-in policies, hyper-coordinated moderation blitzes I don’t think there should be a forum on every story. Also think if you can’t tend to the fields, then don’t bother planting any seeds.
- Comments as Community
- Liability – wield influence on all connected platforms. Focusing the discussion early on drastically reduces the need for moderation later Moderation - keep the record straight – Army ranger – on site, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Medium Knowing the internet is an endless debate. Knowing there are bad actors. Worst case scenario. No comments. Second worst case scenario: too many comments. Highlight contributions: Aggregate a collection “Comment reporting”
- What if the conversation about my news story goes viral and takes on a life of its own. What happened to Serial on Reddit. 40,000+ active commenters. How handle comments/uphold journalism ethics/keep record straight on platform you don’t control?
- How Denver handles comments – on site and on social. This is a video on Instagram. 162 likes and 31 comments. Sara Grant quote.
- Kelsey Proud’s thoughts on comments. Wants to moderate, but not a priority in vacuum on site. Prefers social media.
- Tauhid Chappell
- Angilee Shah quote.
- What a singular journalist can do well. Example of a journalist moderator. Sets tone. Monitors. Challenges. Calls out. Verifies. Like in an in person debate.
- Public discourse takes a real investment. People do not agree. Comments are conflict. Teach value of civility by modeling it. Change in priorities for journalists and news organizations. Create safe, smart, open places to comment, to fix the problems of #participation inequality. Comment don’t just have to be a joke. Open debate is good for democracy, including when it happens in the online space, where it will happen from now on.
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