Managing Comment Sections
- 1. Presentation by the Engaging News Project MANAGING COMMENT SECTIONS
- 2. ENGAGING NEWS PROJECT To provide research-based techniques for engaging online audiences in commercially viable and democratically beneficial ways.
- 3. COMMENT SECTIONS:THE GOOD Examples culled from GateHouse Media organizations
- 6. COMMENT SECTIONS: WHYYOU 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. TODAY’STALK 1. State of the media on comment sections 2. Best practices 3. New ideas
- 8. COMMENT SECTIONS: STATE OFTHE SPACE Closed Comment Sections Expanded Comment Sections Closed, then Re- Opened Comment Sections
- 9. COMMENT SECTIONS: STATE OFTHE SPACE
- 10. 32% of Internet users reported that they had posted a comment on an online news site. (Pew Research, 2010)
- 12. TODAY’STALK 1. State of the media on comment sections 2. Best practices 3. New ideas
- 13. MODERATION Why moderate? 1. Demonstrates to commenters that someone is monitoring the space 2. Creates a better online community Why not moderate? 1. Time 2. Difficult to balance free speech and building a strong community 3. Lack of clarity on what action to take
- 15. WHAT COMMENTSTOTARGET WHEN MODERATING? Important to have an internal conversation and guidelines.To get you started … From NPR’s Code Switch (excerpt) 1) "Why AreYou/WeTalking About This?!?!“ 2) "Group X Is ObjectivelyTerrible, And I Have Proof" (or "It's Not Racist, It's JustTheTruth") 3) "It's Censorship!" (Or "Your Removal Of My Comment Is Evidence OfYour Conservative/Liberal Agenda!") From Huffington Post 1. Abusive, off-topic, use excessive foul language 2. Ad hominem attacks including comments that celebrate the death or illness of any person, public figure or otherwise 3. Racist, sexist, homophobic and other slurs 4. Solicitations and/or advertising for personal blogs and websites 5. Thread spamming (you've posted this same comment elsewhere on the site) 6. Posted with the explicit intention of provoking other commenters or the staff at Huffington Post 7. Content that may infringe the copyright or intellectual property rights of others or other applicable laws or regulations
- 16. WHATTO DO WITH PROBLEMATIC CONTENT? Delete the Comment Delete the Entire Comment Section Remove the User Best Practices from GateHouse Newsroom Handbook Example: SelectivelyTurn on Comments
- 17. COMMENT SECTIONS: EXAMPLES FOR CONSIDERATION
- 18. GETTING INVOLVED IN COMMENT SECTIONS Journalistic Involvement: TwoViews 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
- 19. 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, highlighting strong comments Results Reporter engagement … • Reduced incivility • Increased provision of evidence
- 21. 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”)
- 22. 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 Inquirer “(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 Inquirer and Daily News have started to do this and anecdotally, we feel it’s been pretty successful.” -Erica Palan, audience engagement manager
- 23. TODAY’STALK 1. State of the media on comment sections 2. Best practices 3. New ideas
- 24. #1: HIGHLIGHTING COMMENTS Highlighting strong comments Example: FinancialTimes 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, FinancialTimes Communities Editor
- 25. #2: SEEDINGTHE 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 AnnualConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’11 (pp. 3401–3410). NewYork, NewYork, 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?
- 26. #3: DESIGNINGTHE SPACE Sukumaran,A.,Vezich, S., McHugh, M., & Nass, C. (2011). Normative influences on thoughtful online participation. In Proceedings of the 2011 AnnualConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’11 (pp. 3401–3410). NewYork, NewYork, 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
- 27. EXAMPLES OF OTHER COMMENT SECTION RESEARCH Comment Structure “Respect” button Comment Moderation Civic Discourse
- 28. EXAMPLE OF OTHER RESEARCH engagingnewsproject.org/create-a-quiz
Editor's Notes
- #14: Gatehouse handbook recommends moderation
- #16: http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/05/03/180873196/the-four-types-of-comments-we-usually-remove-on-code-switch http://www.huffingtonpost.com/p/faq-comments.html
- #17: Gatehouse handbook recommends moderation
- #25: http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/232226/can-reporters-help-repair-online-comment-sections/
- #28: Overview of some of the other comments-related projects we’ve worked on
- #29: Overview of some of the other comments-related projects we’ve worked on
- #30: *