Taming the ‘trolls’: How journalists negotiate the boundaries of journalism and online comments

Abstract

The relationship between online commenters and journalists has been challenged as frustrated journalists pull back on commenting and introduce rules to make it more difficult to participate. As new rules and policies emerge, journalists engage in a public campaign to change how commenting and journalism are perceived. This study seeks to understand how journalists attempt to frame commenting and its role alongside journalism. Boundary work was used to consider how journalists use public statements about commenting to establish appropriate roles for both the journalist and the commenter. But these statements also represent philosophies about strategies, policies, and practices related to commenting. Journalists take three philosophical approaches to online comments based on whether they willingly welcome commenters, see the commenter as a threat, but recognize their role, or take action to keep the audience at a distance. Along with these three roles, strategies and professional responses to commenting are also discussed.

Performing science-fiction fandom through debating controversy: Communicative leisure, collective memory and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, below the line at The Guardian

“…There were 517 comments at the time I undertook this research in 2018 and most had been posted in the days and weeks following the review's publication. Below the line means comments posted below online articles by individuals expressing opinions, arguing and performing identities (Wolfgang 2018). These comments are made by people who choose to add to the debate.…”

Don’t feed the trolls?

“…Contemporary research has also shown an uneasiness with an uncritical valorising of close journalistaudience interactions due to the rise of abusive online users. Individual journalists have been responsible for expelling menacing online users and maintaining protected online sites (Binns 2012;Lewis, Zamith & Coddington 2020;Wolfgang 2018). Increasingly, social media have become sites of struggle for journalistic authority in online spaces too often full of trolls (Molyneux and Mourão 2019;Robinson 2010).…”

Digital resources in the current journalistic narrative: Uses and limitations of hypertext, multimedia and interactivity

“…Added to this situation are criticisms of poor quality regarding the contributions (Reich, 2011;Robinson, 2010), or the so-called "dark participation." This is a reference to detrimental types of involvement (Quandt, 2018, p. 37), in the form of disinformation campaigns (Frischlich, Boberg & Quandt, 2018), trolling and cyberbullying, which require the implementation of moderating actions (Wolfgang, 2018).…”