As online conversations between journalists and readers become more prevalent, comments from the audience will become increasingly important. An international study, Online comment moderation: emerging best practices by Emma Goodman, has been published by the World Editors Forum, part of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-Ifra).
Online comments are an “extremely valuable resource” for news organisations, but as online editors know only too well, they can also become incredibly ugly, insulting and divisive. The researchers and writers of the report spoke to 104 news organisations from 63 countries across the globe, as well as to experts in the corporate sector and academia. The aim was to identify key trends, opportunities and best practices.
In South Africa, Business Day, the Mail&Guardian, News24 and City Press took part in the study.
“The news organisations that we spoke to could be broadly divided into two camps with regards to their attitudes to online comments: there are those who embrace comments from users, often as part of a wider strategy of involving their readers in their publication, and there are those who see them as essentially, a necessary evil,” says Goodman in the report.
“Very few organisations (seven) didn’t allow comments at all, but in times of financial difficulties, a costly initiative such as comment moderation, without any immediate and obvious financial benefit, is not always a priority.”
The study found organisations delete an average of 11% of comments mostly due to offensive content, hate speech, bad language or because of spam. The subjects that attract the most commentary – and this is certainly true in South Africa – are politics, societal issues, religion, sports and opinion.
Most agreed that editing comments wasn’t an infringement on their readers’ freedom of speech. “Most editors believe that there are an infinite number of places online for the public to express their points of view, it doesn’t have to be on a specific news site, so it is up to the publication to determine the kind of conversation it wants to host,” Goodman says.
Goodman found there was a “notable lack of awareness about the precise legal situation surrounding online commenting: who is responsible for what is being said where, what exactly is illegal, and the best way to deal with this. ‘It’s a grey area’, was a comment made on several occasions in interviews across a range of countries,” she says.
A divisive issue, she says, is whether to insist of real names or allowing anonymity. In South Africa, sites such as the Daily Maverick and News24 insist on real names being used. “There is a general feeling that requiring real names leads to a bet-ter quality of conversation, though smaller in terms of numbers,” Goodman says. “However, many organisations believe it is important to offer anonymity as an option to those who might not be able to speak freely under their real names.”
Interestingly, most agreed that when journalists take part in the conversation, the discussion is of higher quality. But most organisations don’t allow reporters to enter the fray, believing it’s inappropriate for journalists to be involved in an are “that belongs to the readers”.
Facebook and other social media platforms aren’t moderated as much as the news outlet’s own websites because “because the networks are not their territory and because the real identity policies are seen to make the discussion less controversial”.
The study found that moderation of comments is essential, particularly to protect the organisation’s brand.
“The comments are associated with your brand. It’s absolutely up to you as a newsroom to control what sort of comment syou want to have. Sitting back and saying ‘those comments are stupid but what can we do about it’ is definitely not the way to go, I would say”. Die Zeit, Germany
“We should be able give the space to readers to discuss. Some people inside the company think we should leave the discussion to the readers and not moderate at all, but then the quality gets worse.” The Nation, Kenya.
Editors believe conversations and exchanges with readers help news publications stay relevant, says Goodman.
“For us it does really drive engagement. If you are thinking about how we differentiate ourselves from other newspapers and websites, a healthy comments section under each article is a really big plus for us. If you are thinking about how you get people to subscribe, I think comments are a very big part of that. Having a space that people go to read, get involved if you want, is very important. Comments get people back to the site – they get an email notification if they have had a reply or a recommend – and there’s a feeling that it adds value to your subscription, more than if you bought the newspaper from the newsstand, for example.” The Times of London, UK
Back home, in South Africa, News 24 says its comments sections keep people on the page longer. Commercially you have eyes lower on the page, we know more about our users. We cannot track users across domains but, with a little code work, we can start to see what people are reading. They do read comments, which is great for page views. Our mobile users take comments really seriously too,” News24 told researchers.
Another issue, the research found, was that political commentary could be written by “disguised politicians and political activists to spread their views”.
“We have political activists posting 50 comments from the same IP address. Comments are not actually deleted from the database, but from the page so they arenot visible to the public anymore.” Juzne Vesti, Serbia
“We have political activists posting 50 comments from the same IP address. Comments are not actually deleted from the database, but from the page so they arenot visible to the public anymore.” Juzne Vesti, Serbia
While deleting, editing or moderating comments is a relatively simple process, utilising them for the good of the publication is a whole new world. The study quotes Jerémie Mani, CEO of comment moderation service Netino, saying that in the past, his clients were only concerned with removing the problematic comments (usually about 10-20%).
“But the challenge he sees now is what should be done with the remaining 80% that are acceptable, only about 10% of which might be truly valuable. How can you identify and highlight those interesting comments to make sure that anybody in the community can profit from them, without losing the thread of the discussion?” he asks.
“Your most frequent commenters are your best customers. They know more about your site than anybody else. They know more about your reporters and how they write. And they’re constantly on your web- site giving you page views. And yet we do very little to acknowledge or commend these people. I think very few sites do – some give badges for most positive commenters but most don’t do anything and a lot of people wish commenters would go away. But in fact these are the people who live and breathe your site. They call it this ‘my college football blog’,’ my photo area’, not The Seattle Times because they are so ingrained in it.” The Seattle Times, US
Researchers found news outlets were moving through three stages in their approach to tackling online comments. “The first challenge is how to avoid offensive content appearing on your publication, and this was clearly a first priority for those we interviewed,” says Goodman.
Once they’ve pinned down a strategy to deal with comments, news outlets can “move on to looking at how to cultivate a robust, constructive dialogue on their sites that is a draw in itself.
Finally, says Goodman, they can “focus on how to make comments a truly valuable, integrated element of their publication’.
Of course, being able to do that needs “investment in resources and intelligence, which is particularly challenging at a time when many news outlets are struggling to establish sustainable digital businesses”.
Note: This is the first report on the findings of the study. We will look at other issues in depth next week.
