To Comment Or Not To Comment?

#EIJcomment

Comment Sections: The Good

Examples culled from GateHouse Media organizations

Comment Sections: The Bad

Comment Sections: The UGLY

Comment Sections: Why You 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 community4. Comment sections can be a source of revenue

Comment Sections:State of the Space

Closed Comment Sections

Expanded Comment Sections

Closed, then Re-Opened Comment Sections

Comment Sections:State of the Space

32% of Internet users reported that they had posted a comment on an online news site. (Pew Research, 2010)

Engaging News Project

To provide research-based techniques for engaging online audiences in

commercially viable and democratically beneficial ways.

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

Getting Involved in Comment Sections

Journalistic Involvement: Two Views

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 listeningJon DeNunzio, Washington Post

Reporter Involvement in Comments

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

Highlighting Comments

• Highlighting strong comments– Example: Financial Times

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, Financial Times Communities Editor

Seeding the CommentsResearch 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?

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

Hartford Courant File Photo/Stephen Dunn

I’m using your comment section to…

What happens when we don’t monitor our online comment sections

Deep down, all of us have the potential to be a

comment troll.A 2014 survey by YouGov found 30% of Americans admitted to engaging in "malicious online activity directed at somebody they didn't know.”

Graphic by EFF.org/Hugh D'Andrade, via CC

Think online anonymity is the barrier to civility?

“Civility is emotional maturity.”

-Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics by Susan Herbst, Temple University Press, 2010

#Technology #FAIL

We need a better box.

Is social media that box?

photo credit: 4nitsirk via flickr cc

"One of the hardest things to do is scaling openness, whether you

run an internet platform or whether you run a

country.”-- Robert Kyncl, head of content and business operations at

Source: “YouTube promises more measures to tame its comment trolls,” The Guardian. June 2, 2015

What do we really want in our comment sections?

Questions to ponder before initiating an online discussion

Denver Post

STL Public Radio

abc10.com

PRI on Facebook

Connie Schultz on Facebook

“Now that anyone can talk, the public sphere needs fewer authorities and more moderators... seems like a natural role

for journalism.”

– Jonathan Stray, Tinius Trust, May 2015

Questions & Comments?

/engagingnewsprojectengagingnewsproject.org

@engagingnews

www.mariekshanahan.com/

@mariekshan