INTERDEPENDENCE AND INTERVENTION: NEWS ORGANIZATIONS’ CONTRADICTORY RELATIONSHIP WITH ONLINE COMMENTS
2021
Online news comments are intended to cultivate an interdependent
relationship between news organizations and their audiences. However, uncivil online
comments have become a persistent problem that requires constant intervention through
moderation. In this paper, to better understand these interventions, we analyze interviews
of eleven managers of online comments of large Finnish news organizations. By exploring the
views of journalistic managers of moderation, this study contributes new insights to the
discussion about online content moderation, as previous research has focused more on social
media platforms and moderators. Our results suggest that the managers have a complex
relationship with comments. They would like to see more engaging comments but were also
frustrated with the continuous need to moderate the comments. The managers also expressed
concern that uncivil comments keep more constructive commenters from participating, thus
harming the audience relationship. Organizations tend to outsource moderation to third
parties or automated moderation, as moderation is often seen as time-consuming and outside
of the core work of journalists. However, the managers were not satisfied with outsourced or
automated moderation, mainly because of a lack in contextual knowledge, as also noted in
previous research. Reflecting previous literature, our results suggest that some aspects of
uncivil commenting may require alternative approaches to moderation altogether. For example,
some managers suggested replacing comments with other means of interaction. To address the
inherent contradictions in online news comment moderation, we advocate a view that focuses
on cultivating and rewarding civil comments instead of deleting and punishing for uncivil
comments.
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