How to Cope with Dark Participation: Moderation Practices in German Newsrooms

Abstract

Comments in designated sections of newspaper websites and on social media platforms are the most prominent form of user participation in journalism, offering the opportunity to connect to the audience. Yet, rising levels of dark participation in the form of hate speech, disinformation, and strategic attempts to influence public opinion, provide new challenges for media organizations and require moderators to ensure a minimum of discursive quality. Newsrooms employ a variety of moderation strategies. Based on computer assisted telephone interviews with German journalists working for online newspapers (N = 274), we identified explanatory factors for the implementation of discursive-interactive and authoritative-interactive moderation practices. The results suggest that left-leaning media tend to engage more in authoritative-interactive as well as discursive-interactive moderation than right-leaning media. If media organizations establish a participative communicative setting, moderators engage more with the audience although the prevalence of dark participation is higher.

Keywords:

• Moderation
• user comments
• online journalism
• dark participation

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Looking at individual items, three had to be excluded because of low KMO values under .60, “high-quality user contributions are particularly highlighted,” “no action is taken, the community regulates itself,” and “journalists moderate discussions.” Theoretically, this translates in the conclusion that laissez-faire moderation and the highlighting of user comments are empirically distinct from the other moderation styles. The third item was apparently too general.

2 With the exception of ethnocentric and racist hate speech, which influenced the use of authoritative-interactive moderation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) via the grant number 16KIS0496, “PropStop: Detection, Proof, and Combating of Hidden Propaganda Attacks via Online Media.” Kantar-Emnid Germany conducted the data collection.