news commenting and the politics of participation
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Mediating the [email protected]
@media_republik
The politics of participation: online journalism and the nature of commenting work in news and opinion sites.
3 year study of the politics and governance of public commenting on online news media in Australia, US, UK and Denmark
Aims:-gauge scale, scope, and forms of ‘conversation’ on online news - map the news mediation industry and work of comment facilitation and moderation-identify the technologies, practices and policies that might help journalists mediate more inclusive, civil, productive exchanges online
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What makes conversation democratic is not free, equal and spontaneous expression, but equal access to the floor, equal participation in setting the ground rules for discussion, and a set of ground rules designed to encourage pertinent speaking, attentive listening, appropriate simplifications, and widely apportioned speaking rights.
(Michael Schudson, 1997: 307)
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Methodology:Critical network study of dialogic participation(Lovink, Fuchs, Carpentier).
Where, when and how can people comment on news media?Who controls and mediates this participation?What is the work of facilitating and moderating comments?Who speaks and how is it ‘conversation’?
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Title In-house news comments
platform mode Social mediaComments
Daily Mail yes Bespoke Open by default yes
Guardian yes Bespoke Selected yes
BBC no Bespoke On opinion only yes
Telegraph yes Disqus Selected yes
Sky News yes Livefyre Selected yes
news.com.au no yes
ninemsn no yes
Yahoo 7 no yes
SMH/Age yes Disqus Selected yes
ABC no On opinion only yes
Huffington Post yes Selected yes
CNN yes Disqus Selected yes
New York Times yes Bespoke Selected yes
Fox News yes Livefyre Selected yes
NBC yes Open by default yes
Ekstra Bladet yes Bespoke Selected yes
B.T. no yes
Politiken no On opinion only yes
TV2 no yes
Danmarks Radio no On opinion only yes
Which news sites are open for in-house comment?
Which news sites are open for in-house comment?
• Examined top 5 most accessed mainstream online news sites in UK, US, Aust. DK (n = 20)
• Mix of broadcast, newspaper and digital native, commercial and public service
• 55% open for in house comment on news articles (less than WAN-IFRA 2013 newspaper study)
• All US sites, majority UK sites, 1 Australian, 1 Danish.
• Newspapers dominate in offering news commenting
• Broadcasters less likely to offer commenting access
• Public broadcasters (ABC, BBC) prefer in-house comments on op-ed articles only, as do Danish publications (Politiken debat and DR)
• All push comments out to social media
comment mediation eco-system
Facebook’s Open APIs have established conditions for online sharing and participating that undermine privacy, data security, transparency, and user autonomy.
Robert Bodle, 2011
NEXT STEPS:
Digital inclusion analysis of the commenting interfaces
Data analysis of commenting to determine scale and scope of participation and dialogic interaction
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References:
Bodle, R 2011 Regimes of sharing: Open APIs, interoperability, and Facebook. Information, Communication & Society 14 (3). 320-337
Carpentier, N. (2011). The concept of participation. If they have access and interact, do they really participate? CM: Communication Management Quarterly/Casopis za upravljanje komuniciranjem, 21:13-36.
O’Donovan, C. 2014. Why The New York Times and The Washington Post (and Mozilla) are building an audience engagement platform together. Nieman Journalism Lab. June 19th 2014. http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/06/why-the-new-york-times-and-the-washington-post-and-mozilla-are-building-an-audience-engagement-platform-together/
Schudson, M. 1997. Why Conversation is not the Soul of Democracy. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 14 (4): 297-301
World Editors Forum (2013) Online comment moderation: emerging best practices. World Association of Newspapers WAN-IFRA and Open Society Foundation. http://www.wan-ifra.org/reports/2013/10/04/online-comment-moderation-emerging-best-practices
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