[FORUM] Are online comments doomed?
Russell Smith's article in The Globe and Mail "Say bye to the online comment section as you know it", published last Wednesday the 23rd, looked at the trend in Canadian online media towards getting rid of comments sections. They were, simply put, more trouble than they were worth.
Has one of the great promises of the Internet finally shown to be false? The democracy that instant free publishing promised, the sense that everyone would have a say - are we bored with this already? It has been fewer than 10 years since comments sections on news stories began to be heavily plugged as avenues for “engagement” and debate, and now many major media outlets are reconsidering their existence.
The CBC has announced it is suspending commenting on any stories relating to First Nations issues, as the outright racism they provoked was vile and uncontrollable. The Toronto Star has announced an end to all online commenting on stories (although they will accept letters sent to the editor for a special section). This trend actually began a couple of years ago, when both Popular Science and Scientific American shut off their comments sections - following studies that showed that readers were unconsciously influenced in their judgments of scientific research if they read highly negative comments about it. In other words, comments create bias.
The Star’s reasons are partly principled and partly pragmatic: Their editors said that the comments sections were often filled with useless vitriol and simply not worth reading. But maintaining them is also expensive - moderators must be constantly monitoring and censoring comments, and those moderators must be paid. Most newspapers outsource this job to specialist companies, so losing that large expense is welcome in budget-tightening times. Furthermore, journals cutting off comments in their own spaces are hoping the reactions will continue in other public spaces - in social media - where the hashtags and links back to the articles will serve as a kind of free advertising for the paper.
I was particular caught by his conclusion, which examined the continuing importance of gatekeepers and established authorities for the Internet more broadly.
The promise of forums and chat streams and listener/viewer feedback, and even of Twitter, was one of engagement and interaction: It was supposed to mean that news was not handed down arrogantly by insiders too closely connected to their subjects, it was to have become a collaborative project, a conversation, with its audience. Certainly this engagement has helped with factual accuracy: An error in a story posted online will be noted by a reader within minutes, and that means we can correct it within hours.
And amateur Twitter accounts have maybe - maybe - helped a bit with the speed of dissemination of breaking news, but I think that their role has been exaggerated. Breathless tweets about something happening are useful in finding where to send a real reporter, but they are best ignored until she actually gets to the scene and starts checking facts.
People have been criticizing the idea of the “gatekeeper” in media and publishing for a decade now, and many thousands of alternative or amateur news, opinion and art sites have been created for those without conventional training or privileged background. The world is undoubtedly enriched by this (well, certainly a few app designers are). But gatekeepers haven’t disappeared any more than universities have. An audience will always value an authority.
What do you think of this all? Do you agree with Smith?
Discuss.
Has one of the great promises of the Internet finally shown to be false? The democracy that instant free publishing promised, the sense that everyone would have a say - are we bored with this already? It has been fewer than 10 years since comments sections on news stories began to be heavily plugged as avenues for “engagement” and debate, and now many major media outlets are reconsidering their existence.
The CBC has announced it is suspending commenting on any stories relating to First Nations issues, as the outright racism they provoked was vile and uncontrollable. The Toronto Star has announced an end to all online commenting on stories (although they will accept letters sent to the editor for a special section). This trend actually began a couple of years ago, when both Popular Science and Scientific American shut off their comments sections - following studies that showed that readers were unconsciously influenced in their judgments of scientific research if they read highly negative comments about it. In other words, comments create bias.
The Star’s reasons are partly principled and partly pragmatic: Their editors said that the comments sections were often filled with useless vitriol and simply not worth reading. But maintaining them is also expensive - moderators must be constantly monitoring and censoring comments, and those moderators must be paid. Most newspapers outsource this job to specialist companies, so losing that large expense is welcome in budget-tightening times. Furthermore, journals cutting off comments in their own spaces are hoping the reactions will continue in other public spaces - in social media - where the hashtags and links back to the articles will serve as a kind of free advertising for the paper.
I was particular caught by his conclusion, which examined the continuing importance of gatekeepers and established authorities for the Internet more broadly.
The promise of forums and chat streams and listener/viewer feedback, and even of Twitter, was one of engagement and interaction: It was supposed to mean that news was not handed down arrogantly by insiders too closely connected to their subjects, it was to have become a collaborative project, a conversation, with its audience. Certainly this engagement has helped with factual accuracy: An error in a story posted online will be noted by a reader within minutes, and that means we can correct it within hours.
And amateur Twitter accounts have maybe - maybe - helped a bit with the speed of dissemination of breaking news, but I think that their role has been exaggerated. Breathless tweets about something happening are useful in finding where to send a real reporter, but they are best ignored until she actually gets to the scene and starts checking facts.
People have been criticizing the idea of the “gatekeeper” in media and publishing for a decade now, and many thousands of alternative or amateur news, opinion and art sites have been created for those without conventional training or privileged background. The world is undoubtedly enriched by this (well, certainly a few app designers are). But gatekeepers haven’t disappeared any more than universities have. An audience will always value an authority.
What do you think of this all? Do you agree with Smith?
Discuss.