TO COMMENT OR NOT TO COMMENT?

Talia StroudAssociate Professor,

University of Texas at AustinDirector, Engaging News Project

@engagingnews

Marie K. Shanahan Assistant Professor,

University of Connecticut@mariekshan

COMMENT SECTIONS: THE GOOD

Examples culled from GateHouse Media organizations

COMMENT SECTIONS: THE BAD

COMMENT SECTIONS: THE UGLY

ENGAGING NEWS PROJECT

To provide research-based techniques for engaging online

audiences in commercially viable and democratically beneficial ways.

BackgroundContent of the CommentsDesigning the Commenting Space

COMMENT SECTIONS: THE STAKES FOR NEWSROOMS

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 community4. Comment sections can be a source of revenue

COMMENT SECTIONS:STATE OF THE SPACE

BackgroundContent of the CommentsDesigning the Commenting Space

GETTING INVOLVED IN COMMENT SECTIONS

Journalistic Involvement: Two ViewsComments 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

REPORTER INVOLVEMENT IN COMMENTS

DesignPartner with local news station

Across 70 different political posts, we randomized whether:1)Reporter engaged 2)Station engaged3)No engagement

Engagement was respectful, highlighting strong comments

ResultsReporter engagement …• Reduced

incivility• Increased

provision of evidence

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”)

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

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?

MODERATION

Why moderate?1. Demonstrates to commenters that someone is

monitoring the space2. Creates a better online community

Why not moderate? 3. Time4. Difficult to balance free speech and building a strong

community5. Lack of clarity on what action to take

WHAT TO DO WITH PROBLEMATIC CONTENT?

Delete the CommentDelete the Entire Comment SectionRemove the User

Example:Selectively Turn on Comments

BackgroundContent of the CommentsDesigning the Commenting Space

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

COMMENT STRUCTURE

One-column vs. three columns

SOCIAL MEDIA BUTTONS

Questions & Comments?

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