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News from the Future of Public Media
The “commentocracy” and the public
email discuss Posted by Jessica Clark on Jul 25, 2008 at 10:20 AM
Reading an interesting piece on Politico about the struggles and successes that bloggers and online publications are having with their discussion boards. Reporter Daniel Libit writes:
Across the Web, political sites (along with those dedicated to other mainstream distractions like music, culture and sports) are accumulating such a mass of reader responses that it is changing the very nature of the online exchange. Unique commenting communities, cultures and hierarchies have formed at various sites, distinguished from one another by the province’s ideology, protocol and professionalism.
Web sites ranging from the smallest of blogs straight through to The New York Times are struggling to discourage spammers and bomb-throwers without tamping down the larger, productive give-and-take.
Writers and editors have become obsessed with comment tallies (even if many don’t deign to read the comments themselves), which have become a favored, albeit unreliable, barometer for determining editorial success and tapping into the political zeitgeist.
These aren’t new issues; comment boards were the precursors to blogs, serving as training grounds for up-and-coming writers and those readers drawn to complex and sustained (and/or irate and profane) debates. Blogging tools and reader-driven content ranking however, have rendered the distinctions between writers and commenters ever-more porous. Sites like Talking Points Memo have successfully reached out to readers to crowsource the nitty-gritty of investigation. Who draws the lines between “user-generated content” and just plain “content”? Libit cites the example of Bill Harnsberger, a Daily Kos commenter who became such a favorite that readers now support him as a full-time site contributor.
Along with promoting favorites, readers also flag and shun bad actors—but often this isn’t enough. He reports that the Huffington Post has a 24-hour crew of paid moderators—notable for a site that famously neglects to pay many regular contributors. Some editors have given up on dealing with commenters altogether, like The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, who told Libit that he felt uncomfortable making decisions about censoring speech.
While the term “commentocracy” suggests that the commenters now rule the roost, that’s obviously not true in all cases. It’s an interesting term, though, because it reveals the fear of a shift in power on the part of the pundit class. Their fears are warranted, because their positions are shaky. Political commentary isn’t like medicine; you don’t need a license to practice it.
And what happens when we reframe the commenting communities that Libit describes as publics—drawn together around certain issues, tones, writers, and political figures? They’re practicing civic engagement—a counter to complaints about political apathy. Problems with hate speech, bias, and ignorance on comment boards are the same problems we face in our society, magnified by the anonymity and transience of the medium. Navigating flame wars and honing debate points increases both civic and media literacy.
So, that’s great for individual commenters, but what about the rest of us? “The ever-increasing volume of comments has had a vaguely anesthetizing effect for readers and writers, newbies and veterans alike,” writes Libit. This brings us back to the issue of filters—both human and electronic. Projects like NewsTrust and BallotVox suggest the new role online editors can play when they are willing to position “users” as allies and creators instead of noise. Technological filtering fixes present their own problems—from censorship to leaky boundaries that let too much in—but experiments with widgets, folksonomies and site scraping all suggest the power of reimagining what seems like a messy soup of “content” as modular, remixable data, revealing patterns and shared sentiments.
Seen this way, comments are the raw material of democratic discourse—not quite news, but not just a nuisance either.