From Public Spaces to Public Sphere

Abstract

This study examines how journalists and technologists are re-imagining the construction of networked, dynamic spaces for online news discussion through a qualitative study of 126 idea submissions to a popular news innovation contest. We consider these submissions in the light of the concept of the public sphere, with a specific focus on how these submissions might address shortcomings identified in the literature about the ability of the internet, but of news commenting forums in particular, to serve as an extension of the public sphere. Four main themes emerged in the submissions: a need to (1) better organize content, (2) moderate content more effectively, (3) unite disjointed discourse, and (4) increase participation while promoting diversity. We find in these proposed solutions the possibility for relatively low-cost, easy-to-build systems that could moderate comments more efficiently while also facilitating more civil, cohesive, and diverse discourse; however, we also find the lingering danger of designing new systems that could perpetuate old problems such as fragmentation, filter bubbles, and homogenization. Ultimately, it remains to be seen how technological innovations might help or hinder the ability of the internet, and of news commenting spaces in particular, to serve as an extension of the public sphere. More broadly, by studying how these innovation-contest submissions sought to transform the discursive systems of news websites, we can begin to grasp how the evolution of digital journalism, technologically, might facilitate a broader rethinking about how news institutions could better serve the ideals of deliberation in a changing media environment.

KEYWORDS:

• comments
• discursive systems
• news innovation contests
• online discussion
• open source
• public sphere
• technologists
• user-generated content

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We thank Nikki Usher for pointing us to the contest and the merit of studying it.

FUNDING

This research was supported by a grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Minnesota.

Notes

1. We use the term “news innovator” or simply “innovator” to reflect the diverse mix of academics, journalists, technologists, and others who responded to the challenges (see Lewis 2011).

2. The complete call for submissions for the “Beyond Commend Threads” challenge may be found, as of writing, at https://drumbeat.org/en-US/challenges/beyond-comment-threads/full.

3. While connecting citizens to political information and to elected leaders and uniting individuals and enhancing communal values may have been byproducts of the proposed solutions, these considerations were not among the key stated objectives of the challenge. We thus focused on the deliberative model because it is most closely tied to the language used in the challenge, which likely shaped the textual representations of the innovators’ ideas.

4. An alternative perspective contends that anonymity is beneficial to Habermas’ conception of rational-critical debate, as it helps to level the playing field for all actors through the removal of identifiers that may signify status, credibility, or other cues, thus allowing arguments to be assessed on their merit (Akdeniz 2002).

5. In early 2012, the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership was rebranded as Knight-Mozilla OpenNews; this paper, however, refers to the original name used during the time of the contest (2011). This initiative has since been extended until 2016.

6. At the time of this paper’s submission, the website hosting copies of all submissions (https://drumbeat.org/) was in the process of transitioning. However, links to all submissions remained available at https://drumbeat.org/en-US/challenges/beyond-comment-threads/all_ideas/.