Digital Spaces Of Civic Communication: The Practices And Interfaces Of Online Commenting 3658275146, 9783658275143
This book addresses the socio-technical constitution of civic communication in increasingly digital democracies. Despite
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Table of contents :
Acknowledgements......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
List of Figures......Page 9
List of Tables......Page 15
1 Online commenting as civic communication......Page 16
Part I: Theoretical framework to the analysis of online commenting......Page 26
2 The socio-technical dialectics of online commenting......Page 27
2.1 The dialectical history of online commenting......Page 28
2.2 Journalism studies’ non-dialectical perspective on online commenting......Page 33
2.3 A dialectical approach towards online commenting......Page 37
3 Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices......Page 41
3.1 Domestication: Co-producing interfaces and practices......Page 44
3.2 Affordances: Interfaces preconditioning practices......Page 48
3.3 Actor-Network-Theory: Assembling interfaces and practices......Page 52
3.4 A consolidating framework for a dialectical approach......Page 55
4 Strategies and tactics of online commenting......Page 60
4.1 The practices of online commenting......Page 63
4.2 The interfaces of online commenting......Page 68
4.3 The spaces of online commenting......Page 74
Part II: Interfaces, practices and interactions in online commenting......Page 78
5 Research design and method......Page 79
5.1 The euro crisis as a case study......Page 80
5.2 Sampling......Page 82
5.3 Interface Analysis......Page 91
5.4 Interaction Analysis......Page 98
6 Meaning through the interface: Setting a frame for online commenting......Page 103
6.1 Types of interface inscriptions......Page 104
6.1.1 Informative Interfaces......Page 109
6.1.2 Discursive Interfaces......Page 111
6.1.3 Confined Interfaces......Page 115
6.1.4 Volatile Interfaces......Page 117
6.2 Dimensions of interface inscriptions......Page 118
6.2.1 Deliberative Norms......Page 120
6.2.2 Community Discourse......Page 125
6.2.3 Loyalty and Distribution......Page 130
6.2.4 Legal and ethical liabilities......Page 133
6.3 Means of interface inscription......Page 136
6.3.1 Restrictions......Page 137
6.3.2 Options......Page 139
6.3.3 Guidelines......Page 140
6.4 Civic communication in commenting interfaces......Page 141
7 Meaning within practices: Setting the tone for online commenting......Page 144
7.1 Social spaces of online commenting......Page 147
7.1.1 Small talk and phatic communication......Page 148
7.1.2 Jokes......Page 155
7.1.3 Disputes......Page 160
7.1.4 Reprimands......Page 167
7.2 Issue spaces of online commenting......Page 169
7.2.1 Demarcations......Page 170
7.2.2 Interpretations......Page 177
7.2.3 Discussions......Page 182
7.3 Civic communication in commenting practices......Page 187
8 Meaning within interactions: Constructing the issue in online commenting......Page 190
8.1 Monological constructions......Page 194
8.1.1 Evaluators......Page 197
8.1.2 Postulators......Page 201
8.1.3 First-Person Narrators......Page 206
8.2 Co-Constructions......Page 208
8.2.1 Supporters......Page 212
8.2.2 Challengers......Page 216
8.2.3 Contemplators......Page 222
8.3 Incompatible Constructions......Page 226
8.3.1 Attackers......Page 228
8.3.2 Admonishers......Page 232
8.4 Civic communication in commenting interactions......Page 234
9 Conclusion: Digital spaces of civic communication......Page 238
Bibliography......Page 249
Appendix A: Interface functions as part of the interface analysis......Page 273
Appendix B: Provider anticipations regarding people’s commenting as part of the interface analysis......Page 276
Appendix C: Sample commenting threads for interaction analysis......Page 278
Citation preview
Anne Mollen
Digital Spaces of Civic Communication The Practices and Interfaces of Online Commenting
Digital Spaces of Civic Communication
Anne Mollen
Digital Spaces of Civic Communication The Practices and Interfaces of Online Commenting
Anne Mollen Münster, Germany Dissertation Universität Bremen 2018
ISBN 978-3-658-27514-3 ISBN 978-3-658-27515-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0 Springer VS © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer VS imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Abraham-Lincoln-Str. 46, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany
Acknowledgements
This book is the published version of my dissertation thesis, which was primarily conducted at the University of Bremen within the Collaborative Research Centre 597 “Transformations of the State” and the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI). Here I found an inspiring, thoughtprovoking and supportive environment. My special gratitude for his advice and assistance goes to my first supervisor Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp, who taught me how to pursue a research project and inspired me to explore new areas of media and communication research. I also would like to thank my second supervisor Prof. Dr. Tobias Olsson for his encouragements to trust in my research. For their financial as well as non-material support I am grateful to the Friedrich Ebert Foundation – especially their extremely helpful and understanding staff at the Scholarship Programme. I experienced an inspiring research environment at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick during a one-year research stay, for which I would like thank all staff members and fellow PhD researchers. For their constructive criticism, accurate advice and moral assistance I would like to thank my fellow SFB colleagues Monika Elsler, Swantje Lingenberg, Johanna Möller and Anke Offerhaus as well as fellow ZeMKI colleagues Bora Akşen, Matthias Berg, Çiğdem Bozdag, Mareike Dötsch, Julia Gantenberg, Sigrid Kannengießer, Erik Koenen, Marco Höhn, Leif Kramp, Sebastian Kubitschko, Christina Sanko, Piet Simon, Monika Sowinska, Lisa Spanka, Laura Sūna, Cindy Roitsch and Rebecca Venema. My particular gratitude for their constant invaluable support as companions goes to Monika Elsler, Dorothee C. Meinzer and Cindy Roitsch. My biggest thank goes to my entire family – but especially to Sebastian Potthoff and Emil Mollen for their patience, support, care, understanding and for reminding me of other values in life. Anne Mollen (Bremen, June 2019)
Contents
List of Figures List of Tables
1
Online commenting as civic communication
XI XVII
1
Part I: Theoretical framework to the analysis of online commenting 2
The socio-technical dialectics of online commenting 2.1 The dialectical history of online commenting 2.2 Journalism studies’ non-dialectical perspective on online commenting 2.3 A dialectical approach towards online commenting
13 14
3
Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices 3.1 Domestication: Co-producing interfaces and practices 3.2 Affordances: Interfaces preconditioning practices 3.3 Actor-Network-Theory: Assembling interfaces and practices 3.4 A consolidating framework for a dialectical approach
27 30 34 38 41
4
Strategies and tactics of online commenting 4.1 The practices of online commenting 4.2 The interfaces of online commenting 4.3 The spaces of online commenting
47 50 55 61
19 23
VIII
Contents
Part II: Interfaces, practices and interactions in online commenting 5
Research design and method 5.1 The euro crisis as a case study 5.2 Sampling 5.3 Interface Analysis 5.4 Interaction Analysis
6
Meaning through the interface: Setting a frame for online commenting 6.1 Types of interface inscriptions 6.1.1 Informative Interfaces 6.1.2 Discursive Interfaces 6.1.3 Confined Interfaces 6.1.4 Volatile Interfaces 6.2 Dimensions of interface inscriptions 6.2.1 Deliberative Norms 6.2.2 Community Discourse 6.2.3 Loyalty and Distribution 6.2.4 Legal and ethical liabilities 6.3 Means of interface inscription 6.3.1 Restrictions 6.3.2 Options 6.3.3 Guidelines 6.4 Civic communication in commenting interfaces
91 92 97 99 103 105 106 108 113 118 121 124 125 127 128 129
Meaning within practices: Setting the tone for online commenting 7.1 Social spaces of online commenting 7.1.1 Small talk and phatic communication 7.1.2 Jokes 7.1.3 Disputes 7.1.4 Reprimands 7.2 Issue spaces of online commenting 7.2.1 Demarcations 7.2.2 Interpretations 7.2.3 Discussions 7.3 Civic communication in commenting practices
133 136 137 144 149 156 158 159 166 171 176
7
67 68 70 79 86
Contents
8
9
IX
Meaning within interactions: Constructing the issue in online commenting 8.1 Monological constructions 8.1.1 Evaluators 8.1.2 Postulators 8.1.3 First-Person Narrators 8.2 Co-Constructions 8.2.1 Supporters 8.2.2 Challengers 8.2.3 Contemplators 8.3 Incompatible Constructions 8.3.1 Attackers 8.3.2 Admonishers 8.4 Civic communication in commenting interactions
179 183 186 190 195 197 201 205 211 215 217 221 223
Conclusion: Digital spaces of civic communication
227
Bibliography
239
Appendix
263
List of Figures
Figure 5.1:
Hyperlink networks of political websites from Austria
73
Figure 5.2:
Hyperlink networks of political websites from France
74
Figure 5.3:
Hyperlink networks of political websites from Germany
75
Figure 5.4:
Hyperlink networks of political websites from Great Britain
76
Figure 5.5:
Hyperlink networks of political websites from Europe
77
Figure 5.6:
Example open coding of all interface functions in the Spiegel Online commenting interface
83
Figure 6.1:
Screenshot from the Spiegel Online website's terms of use
98
Figure 6.2:
Screenshot from The Guardian Community FAQs
99
Figure 6.3:
Screenshot from Libération website’s ethic charter
101
Figure 6.4:
Screenshot from The Guardian's Community standards and participation guidelines
102
Figure 6.5:
Screenshot from Sarkofrance website
104
Figure 6.6:
Screenshot from the Spiegel Online Facebook page from 28 July 2012
105
Figure 6.7:
The four dimensions of interface inscriptions
107
Figure 6.8:
Screenshot from Der Standard website’s terms of service
109
Figure 6.9:
Screenshot from the Guardian website’s terms of service
111
Figure 6.10: Screenshot from Der Standard website's terms of service
111
Figure 6.11: Screenshot from The Guardian website's Community standards and participation guidelines Figure 6.12: Screenshot from the Guardian's website Community FAQs
112 114
XII
List of Figures
Figure 6.13: Screenshot from Der Standard website, showing filter and ordering options Figure 6.14: Screenshot from The Guardian website's community FAQs
115 116
Figure 6.15: Screenshot from the Guardian website, personal profile with comment history Figure 6.16: Screenshot from The Financial Times Guidelines
118 119
Figure 6.17: Screenshot from The Economist (Charlemagne) website's Terms of Use
122
Figure 6.18: Screenshot from The Economist (Charlemagne) website's Terms of Use
123
Figure 6.19: Screenshot from the Financial Times website's terms and conditions
123
Figure 7.1:
Facebook Der Standard, 27 June 2012
138
Figure 7.2:
The Guardian, 26 June 2012, ‘Leaders draft federal plan to save the eurozone’
140
Figure 7.3:
Der Standard, 24 June 2012, ‘Terror der Ökonomie’
140
Figure 7.4:
The Guardian, 29 June 2012, ‘Eurozone crisis live’
141
Figure 7.5:
The Guardian, 29 June 2012, ‘Eurozone crisis live’
142
Figure 7.6:
Facebook Spiegel Online, 28 June 2012
143
Figure 7.7:
Guido Fawkes, 01 July 2012, ‘Read Guido in the Daily Star Sunday’
Figure 7.8:
Guido Fawkes, 02 July 2012, ‘Cam Expecting Rough EU Ride in Parliament’
Figure 7.9:
143 145
Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘Europe agrees crisis fighting measures’
146
Figure 7.10: Facebook Le Monde, 24 June 2012, ‘Athènes aurait triché en embauchant des fonctionnaires’
146
Figure 7.11: Facebook Spiegel Online, 29 June 2012, ‘Euro-Krise: Europas Mächtige treten an zum Streit-Gipfel’
147
List of Figures
XIII
Figure 7.12: Facebook Der Standard, 29 June 2012
147
Figure 7.13: Guido Fawkes, 02 July 2012, ‘Cam Expecting Rough EU Ride in Parliament’ Figure 7.14: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
148 150
Figure 7.15: Facebook Le Monde, 24 June 2012, ‘Athènes aurait triché en embauchant des fonctionnaires’
151
Figure 7.16: Facebook Le Monde, 24 June 2012, ‘Athènes aurait triché en embauchant des fonctionnaires’
151
Figure 7.17: The Guardian, 25 June 2012, ‘Cyprus seeks Eurozone bailout’ 152 Figure 7.18: Guido Fawkes, 01 July 2012, ‘Read Guido in the Daily Star Sunday’
153
Figure 7.19: Facebook Bild, 30 June 2012, ‘Teil-Niederlage beim EU-Gipfel: Merkel spaltet Europa’
153
Figure 7.20: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
154
Figure 7.21: FS Misik, 01 July 2012, ‘Angela Merkel – Die gefährlichste Frau der Welt?’
157
Figure 7.22: Facebook Spiegel Online, 25 June 2012, ‘Europa: “Perfekte Lösungen brauchen lange”’
157
Figure 7.23: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
160
Figure 7.24: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
160
Figure 7.25: Financial Times, 26 June 2012, ‘EU plan to rewrite eurozone budgets’
161
Figure 7.26: Spiegel Online, 25 June 2012, ‘Alle Hoffnungen ruhen auf dem Plan der Vier’ Figure 7.27: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
162 163
Figure 7.28: Spiegelfechter, 28 June 2012, ‘Demokratie, Austerität und die zwei Europas’ Figure 7.29: Facebook The Economist, 27 June 2012, ‘Angela's vision’ Figure 7.30: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘Europe agrees
164 165
XIV
List of Figures
crisis-fighting measures’
165
Figure 7.31: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
167
Figure 7.32: The Guardian, 25 June 2012, ‘Cyprus seeks eurzone bailout’
167
Figure 7.33: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘Europe agrees crisis-fighting measures’
168
Figure 7.34: Spiegel Online, 25 June 2012, ‘Alle Hoffnungen ruhen auf dem Plan der Vier’
169
Figure 7.35: FS Misik, 02 July 2012, ‘Angela Merkel – Die gefährlichste Frau der Welt?’
170
Figure 7.36: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘Europe agrees crisis-fighting measures’
171
Figure 7.37: Libération, 28 June 2012, ‘“Les choses vont bien entre Français et Allemands”, assure Cazeneuve’
172
Figure 7.38: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘Europe agrees crisis-fighting measures’
173
Figure 7.39: Der Standard, 25 June 2012, ‘Europa ohne Euro wäre massiver Rückschritt’
174
Figure 7.40: Spiegelfechter, 29 June 2012, ‘Demokratie, Austerität und die zwei Europas’
175
Figure 8.1:
Typical phases of an interaction in monological constructions 184
Figure 8.2:
Libération, 26 June 2012, ‘Au sommet de Bruxelles, féderer l’Europe sans en avoir l’air’
186
Figure 8.3:
Facebook The Economist, 29 June 2012, ‘Keeping it real’
187
Figure 8.4:
Der Standard, 26 June 2012, ‘Nur eine Stabilitätsunion kann den Euro retten’
Figure 8.5:
The Guardian, 26 June 2012, ‘Leaders draft federal plan to save the eurozone’
Figure 8.6:
188 189
Financial Times, 25 June 2012, ‘How to shift Germany out of “can't do” mode’
191
List of Figures
XV
Figure 8.7:
Charlemagne, 26 June 2012, ‘A delicate proposal’
Figure 8.8:
The Guardian, 26 June 2012, ‘Leaders draft federal plan to save the eurozone’
Figure 8.9:
192 193
Spiegel Online, 28 June 2012, ‘Merkel lässt Monti abblitzen’ 194
Figure 8.10: Financial Times, 1 July 2012, ‘Cameron considers referendum’
194
Figure 8.11: Guido Fawkes, 28 June 2012, ‘Full Text of Tory MPs letter to Cameron’
195
Figure 8.12: Der Standard, 26 June 2012, ‘Den Finanzmärkten droht der Kollaps’
196
Figure 8.13: Der Standard, 26 June 2012, ‘Europa ohne Euro wäre massiver Rückschritt’ Figure 8.14: Typical phases of an interaction in co-constructions
196 200
Figure 8.15: Spiegel Online, 30 June 2012, ‘Unionsfraktionschef Kauder: “Der Rettungsfonds wird kein Selbstbedienungsladen”
202
Figure 8.16: Charlemagne, 29 June 2012, ‘Less disunion’
203
Figure 8.17: The Guardian, 29 June 2012, ‘Eurozone crisis live’
206
Figure 8.18: Charlemagne, 29 June 2012, ‘Less disunion’
207
Figure 8.19: Spiegelfechter, 1 July 2012, ‘Krise der Institutionen’
209
Figure 8.20: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘More questions than answers after the summit’
210
Figure 8.21: Der Standard, 27 June 2012, ‘Ein Lob auf Faymann und Spindelegger’
212
Figure 8.22: Libération, 26 June 2012, ‘Au sommet de Bruxelles, fédérer l'Europe sans en avoir l'air’
213
Figure 8.23: Financial Times, 25 June 2012, ‘How to shift Germany out of “can't do” mode’
214
Figure 8.24: Typical phases of an interaction in incompatible constructions 216 Figure 8.25: Der Standard, 25 June 2012, ‘Der Kampf um die
XVI
List of Figures
bedrohte Reisefreiheit’
218
Figure 8.26: The Guardian, 29 June 2012, ‘Eurozone crisis live’
219
Figure 8.27: Charlemagne, 29 June 2012, ‘Less Disunion’
222
List of Tables
Table 3.1:
Comparison of domestication approach, theory of affordances, Actor-Network-Theory
Table 5.1:
43
Sample of comment forums based on hyperlink network analysis
78
Table 5.2:
Sample of documents for interface analysis
84
Table 5.3:
Categories of interface analysis
86
Table 6.1:
Overview of interface inscriptions
94
Table 6.2:
Types of Interfaces
96
Table 7.1:
Relation- and issue-oriented interactions and their
Table 8.1:
respective commenting practices
134
Overview interaction roles
183
1
Online commenting as civic communication
Online commenting and online comment forums are a contested issue. The term forum as such evokes the idea of the forum or agora as a common place for assembly and egalitarian discourse in a civic community. But the comment sections of mainstream news media, blogs and social networking sites have become notorious for phenomena like hate speech and flame wars rather than civil discussion. Consequently, the idea of online commenting as a form of civic communication is being discussed ambivalently not only in academic reflections, but also in political and media discourses. In a 2015 article WIRED magazine even declared ‘the end of the comments’, highlighting the fact that mainstream news outlets like CNN and Reuters, technology websites like The Verge and Motherboard as well as specific pages on Reddit – notably a site living off user generated content – either discontinued their comment sections altogether or heavily restricted them. The same tendency can be observed in Europe with the British Telegraph discontinuing its comment sections and the French Le Monde having changed its forums to only allow paying subscribers to comment on its website. The editorial rationale is often the quality of the comments. They are perceived as hostile and radical, and based on a cost-benefit analysis are simply not considered sufficiently valuable (Hermida and Thurman 2008: 352). Especially within contemporary political crisis situations, like the European financial crisis, the refugee crisis or the rise of extremist parties, the ambitions that news providers harboured for their comment sections increasingly seem to clash with the ways in which people are actually communicating in them (Almgren and Olsson 2015: 6-7; Angouri and Wodak 2014: 558; Bergström and Wadbring 2015: 143-144; Meltzer 2015: 91). Some newsrooms try to address this imbalance and improve comment sections by experimenting with alternative 1
https://www.wired.com/2015/10/brief-history-of-the-demise-of-the-comments-timeline/ (Accessed 25 April 2017)
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 A. Mollen, Digital Spaces of Civic Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0_1
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Online Commenting as Civic Communication
models, as for example The Guardian did with its ‘The Web We Want’ series.2 But with online commenters increasingly overstepping legal boundaries, political actors are entering the scene. Both European as well as national legislators are considering new frameworks to counter infringements of law in online comment sections. In 2016 the European Commission, for example, published together with leading media companies Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Microsoft a ‘Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online’.3 In an accompanying press release, the Commission (2016) highlighted far-reaching consequences for democracies: ‘the Commission and the IT Companies recognise that the spread of illegal hate speech online not only negatively affects the groups or individuals that it targets, it also negatively impacts those who speak out for freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination in our open societies and has a chilling effect on the democratic discourse on online platforms.’ In a similar vein the German Ministry of Justice proposed a legislative framework for ‘Improving Law Enforcement in Social Networks’ in an attempt to secure digital media as democratic spaces. The law accordingly states that ‘hate crimes and other liable content that is not effectively fought against or prosecuted bears great danger for peaceful coexistence in a free, open and democratic society’ (NetzDG 2017). Digital media and especially online comment sections as spaces where people interact are thus more and more addressed for their role within increasingly digital societies and democracies. But the tension between the democratic norms that providers of commenting interfaces and legislators follow on the one side and people’s commenting practices on the other highlight challenges in today’s emerging digital political communication environment. With the rise of digital media we can observe fun2 3 4
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/series/the-web-we-want (Accessed 25 April 2017) http://ec.europa.eu/justice/fundamental-rights/files/hate_speech_code_of_conduct_en.pdf (Accessed 25 April 2017) https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Gesetzgebungsverfahren/ Dokumente/RegE_NetzDG.pdf;jsessionid=91BE900DFA358C63D71E597F4C3F362E.1_cid297?_ _blob=publicationFile&v=2 (Accessed 25 April 2017, translation by the author)
Online Commenting as Civic Communication
3
damental shifts in democratic societies and ‘a complex, ongoing tension between replication and transformation in the social organisation of power’ (Coleman and Freelon 2015: 2). In this context the notion of digital democracy encompasses ‘the extension of democracy via digital communication technology’ (Dahlberg 2011: 864). This includes addressing how far digital media offer citizens communicative opportunities for developing politically oriented forms of communication (Vowe 2014: 42). In other words, it implies questioning how different conceptions of digital democracy assume the democratic subject (Dahlberg 2011: 856). When starting from republican models of democracy, the question consequently is in how far digital media provide spaces in which citizens can become democratically involved through their everyday communicative practices. Digital media as civic spaces can, then, not only be seen ‘as sites where information can be obtained, but also as opportunities where citizens can interact, develop a sense of common interest, sharpen their opinions, and even engage in forms of decision-making’ (Dahlgren 2015: 18). Comment forums that allow communication between citizens as well as engagement with political information can in this context be considered important elements for civil society in digital democracies. But the above-mentioned legislative frameworks demonstrate how far people’s current ways of commenting online rather seem to endanger free and open democratic societies than contribute to supporting them. In trying to prevent undemocratic tendencies legislators are, therefore, increasingly trying to hold large media companies accountable for the content that is published on their sites. While their main objective is to have illegal forms of online talk deleted, the difficult task for media companies like Facebook is to identify such illegal content from the vast amount that is posted everyday. Their solutions mostly come in the form of purely technological and fairly cheap fixes in combination with transferring responsibility for identifying such content to their users (Crawford and Gillespie 2016: 412). Their proposed interface tools demonstrate the underlying technologically deterministic assumptions that have become emblematic of the terminology in which digital media companies like to promote their services. In an attempt to counter revenge porn on its sites, Facebook, for example, announced in 2017 that it would be ‘Using Technology to Protect Intimate Images and Help Build a Safe
4
Online Commenting as Civic Communication
Community’.5 Its solution was to implement image recognition software and artificial intelligence through which images that could be considered revenge porn would be detected automatically. But Facebook not only uses technology to safeguard its users. Its technologies and interface tools can for instance also ‘empower people to engage’6 with media content. When it comes to online commenting, Facebook postulates: ‘The highest quality conversations start with who you are. With Facebook Comments, people use their real Facebook identity, leading to better conversations on relevant topics. Facebook Comments enables people to easily have a discussion around your content, leading to improvement in engagement and time spent on site. With our powerful moderation tools, you're always in control of the conversation.’7 (Facebook Developers Social Plugins) Providers of digital media technologies thus tend to promote the interface with all its sophisticated technical functions as having particular effects, as enabling people to do certain things and consequently as automatically leading to previously anticipated outcomes. Especially in relation to online commenting such a technologically deterministic assumption stands in stark contrast to the experiences of providers. They are not ‘in control of the conversation’. Instead, they struggle with the ways in which people communicate. But based on what is technologically possible, the initial hopes for online commenting within journalistic online news media were similarly overloaded. Comment forums were conceptualized ‘as a community-building and engagement tool, as a place to help people connect, as conversation about the news story or news topic, as a product feature with monetizing potential, as a source of information, and as a way to extend the story’ (Robinson 2010: 132). Current research into online commenting, however, demonstrates that people appropriate comment forums by deviating quite significantly from such anticipations. As pointed out above, commenting is often uncivil and partly undemocratic in form 5 6 7
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/04/using-technology-to-protect-intimate-imagesand-help-build-a-safe-community/ (Accessed 25 April 2017) https://developers.facebook.com/products/social-plugins/ (Accessed 6 April 2017) https://developers.facebook.com/products/social-plugins/ (Accessed 6 April 2017)
Online Commenting as Civic Communication
5
(Blom et al. 2014; McCosker 2013; Suhay et al. 2015). Furthermore, only a comparably small number of articles receive comments at all (Almgren and Olsson 2015: 7), either because providers have restricted commenting or because people simply do not engage with news media input. Overall, people’s participation remains quite low. Different studies across Europe found that mostly less than ten per cent of internet users comment on social networking sites or on news media websites directly. Within specific forums the numbers are even significantly lower with only between one and five per cent of a site’s visitors commenting at all (Barnes 2013: 820; Emmer et al. 2011: 146-147; Hermida and Thurman 2008: 352; Kleis Nielsen and Schrøder 2014: 479/484). This already limited group of commenters is, furthermore, dominated by a small number of heavy commenters, while the majority only comments rarely (Barnes 2013: 820; Blom et al. 2014: 1322; Graham and Wright 2014: 627-629; Himelboim 2011: 652). These findings do not stand completely contrary to the initial hopes and anticipations of news media organisations for their online commenting in the mid 2000s. But after almost fifteen years of experience the initial euphoria has certainly faded. These findings demonstrate that assumptions about the role that online commenting should and could play for civic online communication are not borne out by how people actually appropriate comment forums in their commenting practices. This contested perception mirrors what Roger Silverstone described with mediation in its social and technological dimensions as a dialectical process. Mass media on the one hand define the social meanings of media, but people on the other hand also engage in alternative creations of meaning (Silverstone 2002: 762; also Couldry 2012: 5). In an age of deep mediatization, in times of increasing digitalization and datafication where we see ‘a much more intense embedding of media in social processes than ever before’ (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 34), we thus need to address media as complex technologies on the one hand and as processes of sense-making on the other (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 6). For an analysis of online commenting this means addressing not only the communicative practices that people engage in, but also acknowledging the role that commenting technology and specifically their interfaces play in setting the field for people’s civic online communication. Current research on civic online communication, however, rather follows a singular perspective on either people’s practices or the underlying technologies. This book builds on the argu-
6
Online Commenting as Civic Communication
ment that their interrelation needs to be addressed when analysing online commenting and its role within increasingly digital democracies. A focus on the technology should, therefore, not be at the expense of acknowledging how people appropriate commenting interfaces in their commenting practices and vice versa. In short, this analysis focuses on the socio-technical duality in the constitution of online commenting. It does so by conceptualizing online commenting as a form of civic talk in contemporary societies. Civic talk is vital for democracies, because the civic ‘is a precondition for the political, in the sense that it situates us in the realm of the public’ (Dahlgren 2009: 58). Taking online commenting as a concrete example, then, allows for an assessment of the socio-technical constitution of contemporary forms of civic agency within and through digital media: ‘Civic interaction is a social activity, and it thus has its sites and spaces, its discursive practices, and its contextual aspects. These can be explored empirically; political talk always takes place in concrete settings.’ (Dahlgren 2009: 74) When digital media become the settings in which civic agency occurs, the interdependence of civic agency and the technologies underlying such agency needs to be considered. Online commenting, then, is a valid example for studying the socio-technical constitution of civic talk in digital media, precisely because of the discrepancies between technological anticipations and people’s practices that have become apparent. But this analysis goes beyond the specific phenomenon of online commenting. It addresses more generally the constitution of digital spaces of civic communication at the interrelation of digital media technologies and people’s practices of appropriation in order to assess their role for increasingly digital democracies. In this context, José van Dijck and Thomas Poell have pointed out that: ‘[t]he socio-technical nature of social media communication calls for much more scrutiny as we are only beginning to see how defining its features are for the organization of democracy in Western societies.’ (van Dijck and Poell 2015: 3)
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Consequently, the overarching research question in this book asks: how does online commenting constitute digital spaces of civic communication at the interrelation between commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices? This question implies different levels of analysis. In order to provide adequate answers this book thus focuses on commenting interfaces as the meaningfully produced technology that constitutes the infrastructures behind online commenting as well as the complete range of commenting practices that people typically engage in. Such an integrative perspective on the interrelation between interfaces and practices is necessary in order to assess the socio-technical constitution of online commenting with regard to people’s civic online communication. This book aims at addressing what role online commenting plays for the spaces of civic online communication in modern democracies despite or rather precisely because of its current contestation. As Peter Dahlgren argues: ‘The public sphere rapidly degenerates when political debate, for example, gets locked into pie-throwing and name-calling, or when discussion and argument become reduced to monological incantation.’ (Dahlgren 2009: 91) Some commenting phenomena certainly do not move beyond the level of piethrowing and name-calling. That is why even when deliberation is not considered the only valid form of civic talk, the question remains whether online commenting in its current form is responsible for a degeneration of the public sphere or if people can engage in meaningful civic agency therein. In that sense, this analysis will provide insights into the supposedly undemocratic tendencies within people’s online commenting. Furthermore, it aims more generally at a better understanding of civic online communication in increasingly digital democracies and the role of digital media technologies therein. The book is divided into a theoretical and an empirical part. The second chapter provides the starting point for the theoretical part by depicting the current state of research on online commenting. So far researchers have mostly focused on quite narrowly pre-defined normative assessments of online commenting without actually addressing the range and diversity of practices that people engage in. These mostly deductive approaches do not go beyond postulating that online commenting is in a critical state. In order to overcome this deficit and
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Online Commenting as Civic Communication
provide explanations for the current contested status of online commenting, a dialectical approach is proposed for investigating how commenting is constituted at the interrelation of technology and practices. In order to demonstrate the viability of such an approach, the dialectic history of online comment forums from the 1970s until today will be discussed. Chapter three draws on classical and contemporary discussions on the materiality of media technologies in the field of media and communication studies. Different theoretical frameworks have dealt extensively with the socio-technical constitution of media and communication technologies; their reflections on the interrelation between technology and practices inform the dialectical approach proposed in chapter two. The domestication concept (Haddon and Silverstone 1992, 1996; Hirsch 1992; Morley and Silverstone 1990; Silverstone and Hirsch 1992) provides a valid approach for analysing how people ascribe meaning to comment technology through their practices of appropriation. Additionally, affordance theory (Hutchby 2001a, b) and Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) (Latour 2005) add valuable insights as they both focus more explicitly on the restraining and enabling qualities of (media and communication) technologies. Like the domestication approach they grant people interpretive flexibility when communicating through and with media technologies. But the idea behind affordances helps uncover how providers of commenting interfaces inscribe their interests into the technology, whereas ANT delivers a perspective on how commenting practices can only develop based on the interrelation between people and the commenting technology. Based on this theoretical foundation, the fourth and final theoretical chapter develops the concept of digital spaces of civic communication to understand the socio-technical constitution of online commenting. By referring to Michel de Certeau’s distinction between strategies and tactics (de Certeau 1984: 34-37), people’s commenting practices will be described through his notion of tactics when acting based upon the commenting interfaces they encounter. Strategies can be used to understand how the providers of comment forums design their interfaces according to their specific interests. De Certeau’s distinction between strategies and tactics denotes an uneven distribution of power and a struggle between the two sides. The chapter will thus demonstrate how providers create interfaces and by doing so shape people’s practices to a certain extent. But people can always resist these anticipated and technically-inscribed forms of usage
Online Commenting as Civic Communication
9
by establishing divergent commenting practices. That is why they are turning providers’ strategically produced places – the commenting interfaces – into dynamically enacted spaces. The interface is, then, the site of research, where technology and practices or strategies and tactics come together. It is here where online commenting can be described through the concept of digital spaces of civic communication. The empirical part of this book starts with chapter five on methods. A dialectical approach requires a multi-method design. The first step of this project entails an interface analysis describing all possible ways in which providers inscribe their interests and anticipations concerning people’s commenting into their interfaces. The analysis depicts how interfaces are becoming strategically produced as the technological infrastructure behind online commenting. The second method consists of an interaction analysis on the commenting practices that people engage in as well as on the interactive roles they adopt. This part of the analysis was conducted based on a sample of online comments on the euro crisis from the selected forums. Focusing on a crisis situation reveals the full dialectics of online commenting, as it is especially in relation to political crises that increasingly harmful, hateful and extremist comments are seen. Furthermore, crises are seen as disruptive moments in which citizens come to renegotiate their understanding of a political situation, and thus potentially bear a heightened importance for civic communication. Chapter six presents the results of the interface analysis. It demonstrates how far providers are controlling their specific anticipations for people’s commenting practices through the intentional design of their interfaces, while at the same time acknowledging that people will engage in divergent commenting practices. The interfaces in this analysis can be differentiated into informative, discursive, confined and volatile interfaces based on the meanings that their providers associate with them. Furthermore, the analysis shows how providers establish a frame for people’s online commenting by implementing restrictions, options and guidelines on the interface. Chapter seven turns to people’s commenting practices by discussing how people equally set the tone for online commenting by establishing typical commenting practices. People either engage in issue- or in relation-oriented interactions. Consequently, they produce both social and issue spaces in their commenting – partly irrespective of but also partly alongside provider inscriptions as
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Online Commenting as Civic Communication
identified in the previous chapter. The analysis thus demonstrates that to a certain degree people can appropriate commenting interfaces liberally and irrespective of provider intentions. It particularly portrays how commenting cannot be solely considered as constituting issue spaces. Interactional encounters also require relation-oriented commenting practices, to which providers often do not ascribe sufficient value. The eighth and final empirical chapter addresses how far commenting can be considered as providing spaces for civic communication on the euro crisis. In their evolving comment interactions, people adopt different interaction roles. These roles describe specific ways of engaging with the issue at hand but also with fellow commenters. People engage in monological constructions, coconstructions or incompatible constructions of the euro crisis. Even when people, for instance, act as a challenger and severely provoke another commenter, they are still engaging with the euro crisis as a civic issue. Even though providers often do not value extreme forms of conflict, people thus still engage in a form of civic communication as long as they concentrate on the euro crisis as the issue at hand. In incompatible construction, however, they lose their focus on the issue which quickly leads to a termination of the interactional encounter altogether. Although provider assessments of people’s commenting might be negative, this thus does not necessarily have to be problematic for digital democracies. The conclusion in chapter 9 summarizes the empirical findings and reconnects them to the theoretical framework as presented in the first part of this book. It reflects on the value of a dialectical approach when analysing digital media in their socio-technical constitution. The conclusion addresses how far such an analysis provides insights into the many diverse ways in which digital media become established as spaces of civic communication. It takes people’s practices of appropriation and their diverse ways of acting as citizens in increasingly digital societies and democracies seriously. One central insight is, then, that there is a limit to the technological fixes that large media companies can impose on people’s digital media practices. That is why when trying to find solutions for undemocratic phenomena within digital media, legislators and educators increasingly need to address the civic subject with all its rights and responsibilities in digital democracies.
Part I: Theoretical framework to the analysis of online commenting
2
The socio-technical dialectics of online commenting
Digital media are constituted through both their underlying technology as expressed in their software interfaces as well as through the practices that people come to establish with regard to them. In order to understand how online commenting has developed, I will therefore propose a dialectical approach that investigates the interrelation of commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices. Roger Silverstone described mediation in its social and technological dimensions as a dialectical process (Silverstone 2002: 762, also Couldry 2012: 5). While the producers of media technologies have a powerful position in ascribing social meanings in the production process, people can still engage in alternative creations of meaning. A dialectical approach acknowledges that there is hardly ever complete congruence between the meanings that people come to establish in their practices regarding a media technology and the forms of meaning that providers define for them. Online commenting is a good example for observing this dialectical process. The meanings that providers inscribe into their commenting interfaces often differ quite significantly from the ways people make sense of them in their commenting practices. Commenting interfaces are usually designed according to the specific interests and anticipations of ideal usage that providers articulate. Initially, news workers for example stated that they expect people’s contributions in online comments to follow journalistic norms (Almgren and Olsson 2015: 7; Domingo et al. 2008: 331/340; Robinson 2007: 126/134). However, online commenting now rather seems to be perceived as enabling uncivil and hateful behaviour as well as providing spaces for radical and extremist opinions (Baruh and Popescu 2008; Blom et al. 2014; Harris et al. 2013; Hughey and Daniels 2013; McCosker 2013; Suhay et al. 2015). People thus do not always establish commenting practices that comply with provider intentions and their conceptions of ideal usage. Within online news media this tendency has resulted in either a heavy top-down management of comments or in the decision to shut © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 A. Mollen, Digital Spaces of Civic Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0_2
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Socio-technical dialectics of online commenting
down comment sections completely (Hermida and Thurman 2008: 351; Robinson 2007: 310). This apparent dialectic makes visible how online commenting becomes negotiated at the interrelation between commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices. In the following, I will first describe the history of online comment forums in order to depict the dialectic between the meanings inscribed in the commenting interfaces and people’s sense-making in their commenting practices from a long-term perspective. In a second step, I will demonstrate that current research, despite having observed this dialectic, has not pursued a dialectical approach in the analysis of online commenting. Instead, it has mostly been limited to normative judgments, stating for example that people’s sense-making in their online commenting contradicts news workers’ anticipations. One research desideratum thus concerns the heavy focus on the meanings that news media organisations associate with online commenting. A dialectical approach, instead, inductively analyses how commenting interfaces and commenting practices interrelate. This implies an investigation into the ways in which commenting interfaces are designed as well as into the kinds of commenting practices that people come to establish. Consequently, such an approach addresses the lack of research into the different and diverse forms in which online commenting appears.
2.1
The dialectical history of online commenting
When looking at the history of the currently most widespread social media, it becomes apparent how each of them has become negotiated between the anticipations that providers articulated when designing their website’s interfaces and people’s developing practices of use. The founders of Facebook and YouTube, for example, started with quite specific intentions and limited uses in mind. The YouTube founders initially wanted to have an easier way of sharing videos with families and friends – specifically of the 2004 tsunami and the 2004 Super Bowl ‘Nipplegate’ performance.1 Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook by building a platform on which Harvard students on campus could connect online.2 While
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook
The dialectical history of online commenting
15
these basic functions are still part of their services today, the current diversity of what people do on YouTube and Facebook surpasses anything that could have been anticipated beforehand. Designing an interface, as the membrane or translator between the machinic and the human (Gane and Beer 2008: 55; Poster 1995: 20) is thus a process that evolves alongside the practices that people establish with regard to it. This gradual development becomes even more apparent when looking at the history of Twitter. Compared with YouTube and Facebook, Twitter’s initial concept was comparatively vague. Its basic idea was to share SMSlength messages with a small group of people instead of just one person.3 What Twitter gradually became, evolved very closely along the practices that its users came to establish, as Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter, stated in an interview with Inc. magazine. Many kinds of user requests heavily influenced the design decisions concerning Twitter’s interface: ‘There was this path of discovery (…), where over time you figure out what it is. Twitter actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social network. That led to all kinds of design decisions, such as the inclusion of search and hashtags and the way retweets work. All this came because we were thinking deeply about the question: what is the essence of this product? It didn't reveal itself immediately and would have been a lot harder to get to had we not been focused on that.’4 (Evan Williams, Interview 2013 with Inc. magazine) Focusing on the history and development of digital media thus reveals how they become established at the dialectical interrelation between provider intentions as expressed within software interfaces and people’s practices. The same can be said for online commenting, even though it is not the product of one big media company. Today’s online comment sections within online news media, political blogs and social networking sites must be traced back to their earliest predecessors in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter http://www.inc.com/issie-lapowsky/ev-williams-twitter-early-years.html? cid=em01011week40day04b
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Socio-technical dialectics of online commenting
the late 1970s and early 1980s in order to understand their dialectical development. The idea of online commenting first emerged within online discussion forums like The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL), bulletin board systems (BBS) or Usenet groups. These online forums appeared after the first computer network communication systems had been established. This relatively new technology, as first developed with the ARPANET, was the technical precondition for the gradual emergence of discussion forums. While new computer networks were certainly essential as a technical precondition, Fred Turner revealed comprehensibly how the online discussion forum behind The WELL developed from the US counterculture community of the 1960s as its social and cultural context. Many practices that people engaged in within the online forum of The WELL were adopted from and influenced by this political movement and the counterculture scene that accompanied it. But next to the many offline practices that were integrated into people’s online practices, people equally started establishing new practices in their appropriation of The WELL forum. At the time flaming, for instance, became established as a new practice in online forums and mailing lists (cf. Shirky 2004) – a practice that has now become very common in digital media. These online forums were intended to offer a place for interacting and discussing political or philosophical issues. They became designated as online marketplaces or as online town meetings in which people would debate issues of common concern (Hauben and Hauben 1997: 21; Rheingold 1994; TheWell ; Turner 2005: 487). Alongside the objective of providing a space for political discussion, the idea of online communities emerged. It was Howard Rheingold’s experience as a WELL contributor and participant which led him to formulate the notion of a virtual community (Rheingold 1994). As probably one of the earliest services on the internet, to maintain its everyday operation the WELL even started to engage community managers (Turner 2005: 500), a position which has massively gained importance within contemporary digital media. While the community aspect was thus almost from the beginning an essential part of online forums, commenting on news articles emerged as a typical forum-related practice in the course of their development. Itai Himelboim and colleagues (2009: 782) found that in more than 20 Usenet newsgroups 2/3 of the messages receiving very large numbers of responses simply posted news media content often without any further contextualization. When news media started
The dialectical history of online commenting
17
embracing the idea of user-generated content in the early to mid 2000s, this idea of political discussion between informed citizens and the idea of a (civic) community heavily influenced how news workers anticipated people’s contributions on their websites. But these anticipations were, at least partly, contradicted by the way people started to make sense of online comment forums in their commenting practices. On the provider side, news workers thus largely followed normative implications concerning ideas of political discussion and online communities in their attempts to incorporate user-generated content. They experimented with different tools, but online commenting quickly became established as one of the most popular applications (Domingo et al. 2008: 334; Hermida and Thurman 2008: 347). The terminology used by providers was almost identical compared with the description of the early online forums of the 1970s and 1980s. Journalists and news media executives anticipated that their readers would engage in a communitarian exchange of informed opinions and discussions about current news. They conceived of online comment sections as marketplaces of political ideas and discussion, as meeting halls where citizens engage in comment and criticism, where they gather to be informed about current issues and discuss them collectively (Domingo et al. 2008: 327; Himelboim 2011: 641; Robinson 2007: 318; 2010: 132). At the same time, commenting in news media and political blogs became intrinsically interlinked with the idea of an underlying network of users. As a consequence, news media became increasingly concerned with community building and user management (Braun and Gillespie 2011: 385). On the one hand, the implementation of online commenting in newsrooms was shaped by very practical ideas on how to maintain a forum, how to build a user community, how to strengthen user loyalty to their news media and how to monetize user contributions (Hermida and Thurman 2008: 352-353; Robinson 2010: 132/134). On the other hand, news workers had from the beginning seen online commenting for its potential to trigger political discussion. Consequently, journalists came to judge the quality of online comments predominantly based on journalistic norms and less as expressions of an informal discussion among community members (Almgren and Olsson 2015: 7; Domingo et al. 2008: 331/340; Robinson 2007: 126/134). These normative assumptions especially concerned comment factuality, accountability, relevance and referentiality (Robinson 2010: 134). Online commenting was explicitly envisioned by
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Socio-technical dialectics of online commenting
news media as a possibility to strengthen journalism as an institution of democratic societies (Robinson 2007). In academia such hopes were mirrored in the expectation of new kinds of networked (Beckett 2010; Jarvis 2006) or participatory journalism (Borger et al. 2013; Deuze et al. 2007; Domingo et al. 2008; Hermida and Thurman 2008). However, news workers quickly realized people would not only engage in commenting practices that complied with journalistic norms. To a large extent they instead proved to be incompatible with provider anticipations – thereby highlighting the dialectic between provider intentions and people’s commenting practices. Current research, for example, shows that comments tend to be declarative instead of interactive (Blom et al. 2014: 1323; Freund 2010: 27), they are often found to be opinionated instead of informative (Blom et al. 2014: 1323; Meltzer 2015: 94) and language is frequently uncivil or provocative (McCosker 2013: 13; Suhay et al. 2015: 658). Furthermore, people’s participation seems to concentrate around a small number of heavy commenters, while most people only seldom contribute (Barnes 2013: 11; Graham and Wright 2014: 631; Himelboim 2011: 652; Martin 2015). Recognizing that their anticipations have not been fulfilled, news workers have stated that they feel overwhelmed by the chaos and noise in online commenting (Braun and Gillespie 2011: 386-387). This discrepancy between what providers envisioned for online commenting and what people made of it in their commenting practices highlights the dialectic relation between interfaces and practices. Nevertheless, providers continue to feel obliged to observe civic and journalistic norms in relation to their commenting interfaces. Current developments, therefore, see providers attempting to manage online commenting by intervening in people’s commenting practices through technological inscriptions within the interface. They started to actively manage people’s commenting on a case-by-case basis through commenting policies and comment moderation (Braun and Gillespie 2011: 387-388; Pöyhtäri 2014). Additionally, they introduced a registration process to make commenters identifiable in order to hold them accountable (Hermida and Thurman 2008: 350). Automatic pre-moderation is intended to limit noise in comments and to prevent profanity (Braun and Gillespie 2011: 387; Robinson 2007: 310). Word restrictions and guidelines urge commenters to stay on-topic, to add new information, to confirm facts and to be responsive (Robinson 2010: 134/137). News workers fear legal as well as ethical liabilities when people’s commenting prac-
The dialectical history of online commenting
19
tices diverge too fundamentally from civic ideals (Almgren and Olsson 2015: 7; Bergström and Wadbring 2015: 140; Singer and Ashman 2009: 16), which is why most of their normative assumptions regarding people’s commenting practices are considered non-negotiable. Where other digital media companies like Facebook, YouTube or Twitter are primarily oriented towards profitability and more liberally adjust their service to the practices that people come to establish, news media organisations are not as flexible. But this failure to reconcile providers’ and people’s sense-making regarding online commenting makes it possible to grasp the dialectical interrelation of interfaces and practices in online commenting for analytical purposes. Yet as I will demonstrate in the following, contemporary research has so far not followed a dialectical approach in the analysis of online commenting.
2.2
Journalism studies’ non-dialectical perspective on online commenting
Research on online commenting has mostly originated in journalism studies. The field initially focused on provider perspectives on online commenting, then on people’s problematic commenting practices and now mostly on news media’s responses to managing comments. While the discrepancies between provider anticipations and people’s commenting practices have been recognized, their dialectical interrelation has not become the object of inquiry. Hence current studies do not address how online commenting becomes established in between the commenting technology and people’s commenting practices. As a consequence, contemporary research only provides a selective analysis of online commenting. It especially lacks an object-oriented perspective, like much of German media and communication research (Zillien 2008: 174). In the following, I will propose a rough division of studies on online commenting into three phases in order to demonstrate what contemporary research misses by neglecting a dialectical approach to the analysis of online commenting. In particular, the prevailing focus on provider perspectives prioritizes the meanings that news workers associate with online commenting, while neglecting investigations into people’s sensemaking. Research on online commenting has been largely oriented along the experiences of media practitioners with comment sections. Based on a literature analy-
20
Socio-technical dialectics of online commenting
sis in the field of journalism studies Borger et al. (2013: 124) have identified four phases of research on participatory journalism: ‘(1) enthusiasm about new democratic opportunities; (2) disappointment with professional journalism’s obduracy; (3) disappointment with journalism’s economic motives to facilitate participatory journalism; (4) disappointment with news users’ passivity’. However, when following a dialectical approach an alternative differentiation seems plausible. In that case it makes sense to pay attention to the shifting focus on journalists and news media organisations as the providers and producers of online comment forums on the one side and on the people using and communicating within these forums on the other. Consequently, I distinguish three different stages of research on online commenting that concentrate on provider intentions and anticipations (1), people’s commenting practices (2) and news worker’s dilemmas in managing comments (3). The first stage of research centred on provider interests, assumptions and anticipations concerning online commenting. Researchers were largely addressing the spread and technical implementation of online commenting within news media (Domingo et al. 2008; Hermida and Thurman 2008; Thurman 2008), news workers’ quality judgments regarding online commenting (Robinson 2007, 2010) and the potential for new kinds of networked or participatory journalism (Beckett 2010; Deuze et al. 2007; Jarvis 2006). Studies specifically discussed the possibility of incorporating user-generated content as an opportunity to promote user loyalty, as a way to monetize user contributions and to become more attractive to advertising clients (Hermida and Thurman 2008: 352-353; Robinson 2010: 132/134; Vujnovic 2011:145-146). Newsroom studies demonstrate how journalists were and still are enthusiastic about the possibility of reader participation (Bergström and Wadbring 2015: 140), about the use of online media’s participatory opportunities (Almgren and Olsson 2015: 3) or about the idea of an interactive public sphere (Robinson 2007: 318). Research in this stage concentrated on the potentials of online commenting for news media and online journalism. Partly parallel to this first phase, the second stage in research on online commenting started by increasingly focusing on the people posting comments
Journalism studies’ non-dialectical perspective
21
and on very specific commenting practices. Studies in this context were concerned with the level of participation from commenters (Emmer et al. 2011: 146147; Kleis Nielsen and Schrøder 2014: 479/484; Martin 2015; Newman 2016: 44-45), their demographics, motivations and triggers for commenting (Heise et al. 2013: 419; Tenenboim and Cohen 2015: 212; Weber 2014: 952) as well as their commenting practices and the degree of interaction (Grace and Fonseca 2015: 5; Graham and Wright 2015: 323-328; Ksiazek et al. 2016: 505; Martin 2015; Zelenkauskaite and Simões 2014: 1661-1662). Researchers specifically investigated commenting practices like bullying, hating, flaming, trolling, doxing/doc propping, threatening, and harassing (Reagle 2015: 99-103) that are considered harmful and do not comply with news workers’ notions of ideal usage. The same tendency is mirrored in current research on commenting within political crisis situations. Here, researchers analyse racism and nationalism (Baruh and Popescu 2008; Hughey and Daniels 2013), trolling and uncivil behaviour (Blom et al. 2014; McCosker 2013; Suhay et al. 2015), shaming and blaming (Angouri and Wodak 2014; Every 2013) or radicalism and polarization (Harris et al. 2013; Suhay et al. 2015) in comment sections. Even though news workers agree that comment discussions can be fruitful, informative and rewarding (Graham and Wright 2015: 331-332), current research almost exclusively concentrates on negatively perceived commenting practices. With newsrooms being increasingly occupied with finding solutions against ever more hostile forms of commenting, the third stage of research on online commenting is marked by a focus on comment management. Studies discuss how news workers face a dilemma between maintaining a certain standard of discussion through moderation and regulation on the one hand and guarding principles of free speech on the other. As Braun and Gillespie summarize, providers are faced with a complex set of different and potentially contradictory normative guidelines: ‘This means imposing and justifying policies for managing what is sometimes an unruly dialogue – policies that must not only be practical and enforceable, but also balance the economic, professional, and ideological aspirations of the news organization. News organizations in these positions find themselves grappling not only with whether the user comments fit the journalistic mission of their sites, but also whether deleting com-
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Socio-technical dialectics of online commenting
ments or censoring language fits their journalistic principles.’ (Braun and Gillespie 2011: 384) Current studies therefore address how providers walk a thin line when trying to manage people’s commenting practices and how less top-down approaches to preventing incivility in comment sections might be more efficient (Naab et al. 2016; Peacock et al. 2017; Pöyhtäri 2014; Stroud et al. 2016; Ziegele and Jost 2016). This dilemma between providing a secure commenting space and enabling free speech raises fundamental questions about who ‘owns’ the spaces within online comment forums (Robinson 2010: 138) and consequently whether commenters or providers get to decide what rules count therein. Compared with the two former stages of research on online commenting, this third stage in particular has taken the interrelation between providers and commenters into account. But while many studies recognize the dialectic between provider interests as inscribed in the commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices, they still do not make it their research perspective. Instead, researchers often consider news workers’ anticipations and the meanings they preliminarily define for online commenting as the standard against which to judge people’s commenting practices. Consequently, there are a large number of deductive analyses that normatively investigate whether or not certain preassessed standards are met in people’s comments. Two research desiderata can be identified at this point. First, these deductive approaches do not describe the full range of online commenting. They only provide a selective view on online commenting by focusing on specific practices, often without acknowledging that online commenting in its variety might mean different things for different people. Second, current research thus stops at normative judgments without explaining why certain communicative phenomena occur in online commenting. These approaches consider provider interests and people’s commenting practices as two opposing and separate entities. They acknowledge that the two interrelate in some way, but they do not focus on how online commenting becomes established through this interrelation. In the last part of this chapter I will, therefore, describe the benefits of a dialectical approach to the interrelation of software interfaces and people’s practices in online commenting.
A dialectical approach towards online commenting
2.3
23
A dialectical approach towards online commenting
A dialectical approach towards online commenting considers it to be constituted equally through provider interests as inscribed in commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices. It gives prominence to the potential differences in meanings that providers on the one side and commenters on the other associate with online commenting. A dialectical approach does not privilege one side over the other. By doing so it goes beyond current research on online commenting, which often focuses on either the commenter’s or the provider’s perspective. The idea behind a dialectical approach expresses that these two sides do not have to be in alignment, but nevertheless stand in close connection with each other. Their complex interrelation in fact accounts for the many diverse ways in which online commenting becomes established and consequently for the many different meanings associated with it. This diversity of meanings can be analysed empirically. A dialectical approach consequently addresses the desiderata in current research on online commenting as explicated above. First, it allows for inductive descriptions of the many different forms in which commenting appears. By doing so, it surpasses strictly deductive approaches focusing only on specific practices or pre-defined communicative norms. Second, it provides detailed insights and explanations into why certain commenting phenomena occur and how they have become established at the interrelation of commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices. A dialectical approach describes a more encompassing picture of the many diverse forms in which online commenting occurs, because it does not start with pre-defined normative assumptions. Research in the field of media and citizenship is often marked by implicit notions regarding the civic subject (Dahlgren 2013: 72). Online commenting as a form of civic communication, for instance, most often seems to be considered for its deliberative potential (Freelon 2015: 773-774). A dialectical approach, however, does not translate democratic models into ‘valid’ forms of civic online communication against which to judge people’s commenting practices. As an inductive approach, it accounts for the diversity and complete range of people’s commenting practices. Among others, it would equally consider humorous forms of civic online discussions (Hirzalla et al. 2013), antagonistic communication or digital forms of civil disobedience
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Socio-technical dialectics of online commenting
(Coleman 2013; Züger et al. 2015) as forms of civic online communication, which would not be covered by a focus on pure deliberation. A dialectical approach, therefore, accounts for the diverse commenting practices that people establish, even if these contradict providers’ initial intentions or do not correspond with specific models of citizenship. The inductively analysed practices can, at a later point, still be assessed from the perspective of different models of citizenship (cf. Isin and Turner 2011) or from completely different theoretical angles. Renee Barnes (Barnes 2013: 814), for example, shows in an analysis that fan studies instead of democratic theory might be a more adequate theoretical framework for analysing discussions in online comment forums. Instead of engaging in deliberation, commenters can be seen as emotionally engaging in sense-making, creating their own meanings and interpretations of news stories and consequently establishing a ground for selfexpression, identity construction and community building. Furthermore, a dialectical approach analysing both commenting interfaces and practices provides explanations into why certain commenting phenomena become established in the way they do. Even though the focus on people’s practices is essential for an analysis of commenting as a form of civic communication, the underlying technology should not be neglected. Deen Freelon, for example, analysed how the technological design of digital media tends to promote certain forms of civic communication. According to his analysis Twitter’s technology promotes civic online communication that is more in line with communitarianism as a democratic norm, whereas online comment forums are inclined to deliberation and liberal individualism (Freelon 2015: 785). The design of an interface thus seems to shape people’s commenting practices in some way. But such an analysis still does not provide insights into why deliberation and liberal individualism, which are quite diametric to each other, appear in equal parts in online comment forums. A dialectical approach investigates how and in what ways providers inscribe their interests and anticipations in the interfaces of online commenting. It takes into account the fact that providers set the scene in which people subsequently establish and engage in their commenting practices. Hence a dialectical approach can provide explanations for the ways in which online commenting becomes established as a form of civic communication. Practices and technology are not considered separately. The analysis of people’s commenting practices
A dialectical approach towards online commenting
25
yields explanations for the inscriptions that providers design into commenting interfaces and vice versa. As a consequence, a dialectical approach can provide insights into such problematic commenting phenomena like hate speech and the increasing levels of hostility, incivility and abuse in political online discussions. Investigating indepth how commenting develops might prove more viable in solving these issues, because it attempts to explain how commenting practices and software interfaces both co-constitute online commenting. With its focus on the interrelation between practices and technology, a dialectical approach thus would come neither to socially nor technologically deterministic assumptions. Beyond the specific case of online commenting, a dialectical approach also addresses complex issues concerning questions of power and control. It acknowledges that software interfaces can limit people’s ability to act freely within more and more intrusive, restrictive and controlling software interfaces of digital media. On the commenting interfaces, ideas concerning respectful discussion, exchange of opinions, information gathering, truthfulness etc., for example, find their technical counterpart in response-buttons for referencing, ranking systems for evaluating the quality of comments, registration systems to be identifiable, word count restrictions to stay on topic, content moderation, policy guidelines, etc. However, by acknowledging that people always make sense of such interfaces, a dialectical approach recognizes that people can still create their own meanings irrespective of provider anticipations. Andrew Feenberg (2009) argues in this context that people’s power and liberty to communicate in the way they want to communicate should itself be a democratic norm of civic online communication: ‘(…) imagine how we would feel if institutions such as universities, government agencies, and corporations allowed only official communication on their property: no jokes, no personal remarks, no criticism. We would surely find such severe censorship totalitarian. The Internet could have been configured technically in just this way. The result would have been the enhancement of official communication in business and government with no corresponding enhancement of the informal communication in which daily life goes on, including the conversations of political significance that form the basis of the democratic public sphere.’ (Feenberg 2009: 79)
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Socio-technical dialectics of online commenting
A dialectical approach is thus also relevant for an analysis that considers not only such forms of talk as civic communication that fulfil ‘the deliberative gold standard’ (Coleman and Moss 2012: 7). Even people’s informal and occasionally uncivil commenting practices might be relevant for people’s civic online communication. In times when people are increasingly confronted with intrusive platforms and interfaces within digital media (Clark et al. 2014; Gillespie 2015; Plantin et al. 2016), a dialectical approach thus recognizes that even though a technology promotes certain communicative practices, it still does not predetermine how people make use and make sense of these technologies. A detailed look at how technology and practices interrelate in digital media is, then, necessary to understand how online commenting becomes established as a form of civic communication in increasingly digital democracies.
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Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices
A dialectical approach to the analysis of online commenting as a form of civic communication concerns itself with the interrelation between technology and practices. It therefore fits within media and communication studies’ recent interest in the materiality of media technologies, which has been addressed particularly in the context of new digital media platforms (cf. Gillespie et al. 2014 for an overview). Here, the materiality of media technologies is defined as either technological objects’ and artifacts’ physical character (Lievrouw 2014: 25), which includes the underlying physical infrastructures that media technologies rely on (Farman 2015: 2), and increasingly the material dimensions of software even though it is not physically tangible (Manovich 2013). The interest in digital media platforms is relatively new. But a focus on media technologies and their materiality has a long-standing tradition in media and communication research. Classical approaches can be roughly divided along two opposing positions that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. On the one side, media ecology and medium theory intended to analyse the effects of media technologies on society. Marshall McLuhan claimed that media as channels for communication have inherent transformative qualities – independent from any communicator or content – as summarized in the well-known phrase the medium is the message. He saw technology firstly as emerging from the human and thus constituting extensions of men. But, secondly, those technologies were understood to reflect back on humans, autonomously and continuously transforming them (McLuhan 1962). On the other side, Raymond Williams (1975) equally acknowledged that media technologies are not simply neutral transmitters. But contrary to McLuhan he did not claim that media technologies have an independent causal effect on society. Instead, his approach of cultural materialism saw technologies as emerging from societal, cultural, economic, political and technological contexts and transformations within these contexts. Consequently, media technologies necessarily reflect existing cultural and social forms of communication. © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 A. Mollen, Digital Spaces of Civic Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0_3
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Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices
Both approaches can be criticised for neglecting to focus on people’s practices, which a dialectical approach tries to overcome by aiming to investigate how media become established in a specific form through the interrelation of practices and technologies. In this context Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp argue that the materializations and institutionalizations of media matter to our everyday communicative practices, and thus also to civic practices in digital democracies: ‘Thinking about the social world and its different domains as “mediatized” means grasping that its construction involves practices of communication that are, in turn, moulded by long-term processes of institutionalization and materialization that we refer to as “media”.’ (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 33) In order to grasp this interrelation of the technical and the social, current media and communications approaches propose in slightly differing terminology looking at how materiality, technology or artefacts interrelate with agency or practices in specific contexts or arrangements (Lievrouw 2014: 45). Such perspectives correspond with a dialectical approach to the analysis of online commenting, in that they acknowledge the interrelation of commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices as constitutive of the ways in which online commenting becomes established. A dialectical approach should thus draw on theories of the materiality of media technologies, on people’s media-related practices as well as on theories focusing on their interrelation. On the materiality side, many approaches in media and communication studies have recently taken cues from the field of science and technology studies (STS). Research on the social shaping of technology (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999) and the social construction of technology (Bijker et al. 1987; Bijker and Law 1992; Pinch and Bijker 1984; Woolgar 1991) has long been concerned with the interrelation of the technical and the social. For media and communication research these approaches provide valuable starting points. First, they are explicitly opposed to technologically deterministic arguments (Feenberg 1992: 304). Secondly, they theorize how the development and production of media technologies are framed by social context factors. That is why they can provide explanations of how platforms and interfaces matter and intervene by conditioning and
Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices
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shaping people’s digital media practices as well as experiences (cf. Clark et al. 2014; Gillespie 2015; Massanari 2015; Papacharissi 2009; van Dijck 2013). However, STS approaches have equally been criticized for not focusing on the consequences and uses of technologies once they have been developed (Winner 1993: 368). But contrary to science and technology studies, media and communication studies itself can point to a longstanding tradition of focusing on media audiences and their practices of appropriation. In this regard, current research acknowledges that people can resist the technological constraints of digital media platforms by protesting against certain technical settings, by appropriating media platforms in alternative ways or by assigning different meanings to automated processes in digital media (cf. boyd 2008; Latzko-Toth 2014; Lyons et al. 2011). A dialectical approach considers both: the ability to design interfaces so that they constrain and enable specific practices as well as people’s ability to make sense of these constraints and opportunities. A number of theoretical approaches equally acknowledge the sociotechnical heterogeneity of contemporary media that a dialectical approach addresses. In the following, I will be drawing on the domestication approach, affordance theory as well as Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) to develop a consolidating theoretical framework that encompasses the interrelation of commenting interfaces and practices. All three theories take into account people’s appropriation of media technologies in their practices of use, while equally acknowledging technology as framing the possibilities for potential practices. But affordance theory and ANT in particular do not follow through with a dialectical approach. Neither pays sufficient attention to the formative role that people’s practices play in shaping media technologies. Domestication, on the contrary, recognizes how people ascribe meaning to media technologies, but it is not very accurate in theorizing how media’s materiality is reflected in people’s everyday practices. Especially in times of deep mediatization, where social processes increasingly rely on digital media and communication technologies (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 37), the dialectical approach as proposed within the domestication concept therefore needs reconsidering. While it provides a good starting point for analysing how people make sense of constraining and enabling software interfaces within online comment forums, it has hitherto failed to fully appreciate their formative potential. That is why I am proposing a dialectical approach based on a consolidated theoretical grounding between domestication, affordances and ANT.
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3.1
Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices
Domestication: Co-producing interfaces and practices
The domestication approach as developed and further extended by Roger Silverstone, David Morley, Lesley Haddon, Eric Hirsch and others introduced the idea of mediation as a dialectical process (Silverstone 2002: 762). Based on Hermann Bausinger’s observations that technology ‘is consumed and absorbed by the everyday’ (1984: 345), the domestication approach analyses how people integrate and make sense of media technologies and the content they transmit within their everyday practices (cf. Silverstone and Hirsch 1992). The approach explicitly intends to grasp ‘a constant dialectic of change’ (Silverstone 2006: 232) between the human and the technological. Based on the assumption that the materiality of media matters for people’s practices, it asks explicitly how people make sense of this materiality and thereby co-constitute what media technologies come to signify in specific contexts and situations. By doing so, the approach was meant to propose a counterargument to technological determinism (Silverstone 2006: 231), thus sharing a common ground with STS approaches. But while STS proposes an alternative perspective to the assumption that technologies influence society in a direct and causal way by arguing that technological development is always shaped by social factors, domestication further extends this argument to the consumption side of media technologies (Wajcman and Jones 2012: 678). In order to do so, the domestication approach analyses how people use media technologies once they have exited the production process and entered the household (Bakardjieva 2006: 64; Silverstone 2006: 231). The dialectics in this process are expressed in people’s domestication of media technologies through their everyday practices on the one hand and the technologies’ shaping of people and their practices on the other. This is already expressed in the - as the authors say - purposely-ambiguous title that Roger Silverstone and Eric Hirsch chose for their 1992 volume of essays Consuming Technologies: ‘On the one hand there is the image of these technologies in general, and information and communication technologies in particular, being consumed increasingly in the domestic context of our everyday lives. On the other hand there is the image of these technologies consuming us, the users, of transforming us to the potential inherent in them.’ (Silverstone and Hirsch 1992: 1-2)
Domestication: Co-producing interfaces and practices
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Despite acknowledging media’s double articulation – that is their material as well as symbolic dimension (Morley and Silverstone 1990: 36/51) – the approach’s analytical focus was always more centred on people’s everyday practices. It set out to analyse how media as technologies and as transmitters of content became domesticated within families’ everyday practices (cf. Haddon and Silverstone 1992; Morley and Silverstone 1990; Silverstone and Hirsch 1992). To this end, domestication is described as occurring in four continuous and circular phases: appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion. I rely on the original division of domestication into four phases as originally formulated by Roger Silverstone, Eric Hirsch and David Morley in their chapter on ‘Information and communication technologies and the moral economy of the household’ (1992). In later works, the authors themselves but also other scholars have slightly altered the phases or rather the dimensions of the domestication process. Most authors, however, agree on commodification, appropriation (including objectification and incorporation) and conversion as the dimensions of domestication (Hartmann 2013a: 21). Appropriation refers to new media entering the household, objectification means using and disposing new media in the home, incorporation signifies the integration of new media into daily routines - especially in a temporal sense and conversion describes how the way new media become domesticated in a household is mirrored back to the outside world (Silverstone et al. 1992: 18-19). A domestication analysis, then, focuses on how people orient their everyday practices along their household’s shared cognitions, values, aesthetics and ideas concerning social order – in other words their household’s moral economy – when domesticating new media: ‘it is the family relationships as realized through the factors of age, gender, siblingship, race, etc. which constrain the possibilities inherent within the appropriated thing’ (Hirsch 1992: 195). While the approach acknowledges that media as physical devices have certain inherent potentials, they equally become constrained through people’s contextualized practices. Consequently, the domestication approach does not describe the interrelation between media technologies and people’s related practices as a unidirectional influence: the approach ‘is not just concerned with the enactment of technology (…): it is a co-production of the social and the technical’ (Sørensen 2006: 46). This idea of co-producing media technologies and media-related practices makes the approach valuable beyond the age of broadcasting media. For an anal-
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Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices
ysis of online commenting, a domestication approach can for instance be used to describe how commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices stand in close interrelation as opposed to being merely causally connected with each other. But when moving outside of domestic life and beyond broadcasting media, domestication’s original dialectical approach nevertheless requires new consideration. Predominantly triggered through the advent of the internet and mobile media, which challenged the idea of physically tangible and permanently locatable media devices in the home, a new generation of researchers proposed a first round of modifications to the domestication concept. In this context, Maren Hartmann (2008) described how changing media landscapes required a deeper theoretical grounding of the original domestication approach as well as new methodologies. She distinguishes domestication 1.0 – relating to the original ideas as formulated by researchers in the UK – and domestication 2.0 as developed by German and other researchers outside of the UK context. With internet technologies and mobile devices no longer being fixed to certain locations or times within a household, Jutta Röser and Corinna Peil formulated the notion of inner-domestic mobility (2012: 159). They argue that a substantial transformation has been under way with media now permeating many more aspects of domestic life than before (Röser and Peil 2012: 145). Joachim Höflich subsequently moved beyond the domestic context by analysing how mobile phone technologies dislocated domestic practices to the outside, which resulted in the domestication of public spaces (Höflich 2011: 18). This dislocation outside of the domestic goes hand in hand with conceptual and methodological modifications, with Hartmann suggesting a more thorough conceptualisation of mediated mobilism (Hartmann 2013b: 46) and proposing mobile ethnographies as a new research method (Hartmann 2006: 97). I am arguing that a second round of theoretical modifications becomes necessary when focusing on the software interfaces of digital media technologies instead of physically tangible media devices. In times of software’s secondary agency (Mackenzie 2006: 7) and software automation (Manovich 2013: 128), the domestication approach’s neglect of the agency of technology (Hartmann 2008: 412) needs to be re-addressed. As an approach which makes users ‘indisputably actors in the technological world’ (Bakardjieva 2006: 65), domestication is a valuable reference point for the emerging fields of software studies and platform
Domestication: Co-producing interfaces and practices
33
studies, which have made software and interfaces their object of inquiry (cf. Bogost and Montfort 2009; Fuller 2008). They yield valuable insights into how software interfaces might constrain people’s practices. But they tend to overemphasise software’s role in contemporary cultures and societies (Taffel 2015: 9) by failing to appreciate people as active and appropriating agents. Taking the domestication approach as a starting point, but acknowledging that software interfaces matter significantly for people’s media-related practices, allows for an analysis of the dialectic socio-technical interrelation within software-based digital media. In an analysis of online commenting, the domestication approach thus helps to balance the analytical focus on both the commenting interfaces as well as on people’s commenting practices. Although moving away from the domestic context entails sidelining important aspects of digital media’s domestication, this shift of attention makes it possible to address how people make sense of the restraining and enabling qualities of software interfaces within digital media and how these shape people’s related practices. A dialectical approach to online commenting argues that digital media are themselves embedded in complex contexts for media consumption and use. Andrew Feenberg asks for example ‘what of cases, such as online communication, where users do not bring technology in from the outside but act through it on the public world?’ (Feenberg 1999: 72; cf. also Hartmann 2006: 93). The complex software interfaces through which people can navigate, communicate, interact and consume media content are, then, themselves becoming the context for people’s media-related practices. This understanding resonates at least partly with Hartmann’s proposal of a triple articulation and her call to recognize individual media contents, such as specific websites, as part of a domestication analysis (Hartmann 2006: 96). Analysing specific software interfaces does not imply a narrow focus on people’s micro practices of appropriation in highly specific contexts. Instead, it can address wider questions of inequality and social order, as the domestication approach always intended to do (Morley and Silverstone 1990: 34). A dialectical approach to the interrelation of software interfaces and people’s practices, for example, questions people’s ability to counteract provider interests in increasingly powerful and intrusive digital media platforms. On an empirical level, the approach can grasp how individual practices can be assembled in their similarity as well as distinguished in their distinctness as patterns of use or use genres on a
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Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices
societal level (Bakardjieva 2006: 71-72). A dialectical approach to software interfaces and people’s related practices is, therefore, still valuable for understanding how technologies shape the way that people make sense of the world (Silverstone 2006: 231). But even though domestication recognizes the role of media technologies, it does not provide an approach to analyse exactly how technological preconditions within online commenting reflect back upon people’s commenting practices. This requires contextualizing domestication with approaches that focus more explicitly on the materiality of software interfaces, for which I will be relying on the theory of affordances and Actor-NetworkTheory.
3.2
Affordances: Interfaces preconditioning practices
The theory of affordances adds to a dialectical approach in the analysis of online commenting by providing a perspective on how the materiality of commenting interfaces sets the ground for people’s commenting practices. Like the domestication approach it analyses media’s socio-technical heterogeneity. Specifically, it describes how media technologies enable or constrain people’s practices, while equally acknowledging that people can flexibly interpret the technologies they use. These interpretations, however, remain within the range of what the specific technology affords. While domestication leans towards the practice side, the theory of affordances highlights how the way technologies are produced matters to how they will be put to use. In this sense, it provides the extra dimension required when formulating a dialectical approach to the analysis of online commenting. Its value lies in considering how constraints become inscribed into the software interfaces of online commenting. By emphasising the potential of technologies to frame people’s interpretive flexibility, the theory of affordances offers a consolidating perspective between technological determinism and social constructivism (cf. Hutchby 2001b: 443444; McVeigh-Schultz and Baym 2015: 2; Nagy and Neff 2015: 2-3). On the one side, Ian Hutchby (Hutchby 2001a: 28/33; 2001b: 445) positions affordances against Grint and Woolgar’s technology as text approach (Grint and Woolgar 1997) by observing that technologies have an inherent material restraining quality and are not purely symbolic and freely interpretable. On the other side, the
Affordances: Interfaces preconditioning practices
35
theory is equally positioned against a technologically deterministic perspective by denying that the inherent characteristics of a technological object are completely independent from any agency associated with it. Consequently, he defines affordances as functional, because they allow certain functions to be carried out while restraining others. And they are relational, because they need to be seen in relation to the person acting with the technological objects in question (Hutchby 2001b: 444/448). In the words of James J. Gibson, who coined the term, the concept of affordances is not only a tool to describe the environment according to objective laws of nature. Affordances are also always subjective, meaning that the opportunities or restrictions they offer can be very different depending on the observer: ‘An affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behaviour. It is both physical and psychical, yet neither. An affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer.’ (Gibson 1977: 129) For online commenting the theory of affordances thus provides an entry point towards analysing how far commenting interfaces in their specific material form offer people certain options for commenting. While the approach acknowledges media’s socio-technical heterogeneity, it puts technology first. In a reflection on the theory’s application in media and communication studies, Peter Nagy and Gina Neff conclude accordingly that: ‘[i]n a broad sense, the term “technological affordances” establishes material qualities of technologies and media as being constituted at least partly outside the communicative, mediate, and affective processes of the people who use them.’ (Nagy and Neff 2015: 2) That is why the theory can be used to analyse how a technology preconditions certain communicative practices. When added to a dialectical approach, this linear perspective acknowledges how the interfaces of online commenting can be purposefully designed to enable and restrict certain commenting practices. Compared with the domestication approach, the theory of affordances emphasises that the software interfaces of online commenting should not be taken
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Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices
as a given, but are rather the outcome of an intentional production process. Accordingly, much research on affordances stems from the production side, specifically from design studies (cf. Norman 1990; Norman 1999). Donald A. Norman coined the term perceived affordances to signify affordances that have been made perceptible to the users of specific objects. Successful design then means designing objects in such a way as to make intended uses directly perceivable to their users (Norman 1999: 39). Such an understanding has led in media and communication research to studies focusing on how producers of media technologies align their design practices in order to attain specific corporate or political ends (Ekström et al. 2013; Heemsbergen 2014; Postigo 2014). Affordances are here mostly seen as manipulative tools, which can be purposefully designed and implemented in order to shape people’s practices, as for example providers of commenting interfaces do when they are trying to establish respectful and nonhateful online discussions through technical alterations to their interfaces. As hinted at before, such a view simultaneously highlights one of the theory’s weaknesses. Although the concept of affordances conceptualizes people’s interpretive flexibility and theoretically ‘points both ways, to the environment and to the observer’ (Gibson 1979: 129), it is often used to promote a linear perspective on the socio-technical interrelation of digital media. Affordances are, then, often exclusively located on the technology side. This does not, however, explain how affordances become established at the interrelation of technology and practices. Analysing commenting practices and then stating that the commenting interfaces afford exactly these forms of commenting and not others would not provide for a very meaningful analysis. Research using the concept, therefore, often still black-boxes the technology, while making assumptions about how its affordances have come to shape people’s practices. That is why applications of the theory of affordances sometimes mask more than they can unveil, and why affordances often run the risk of being equated with ‘features of technology’ (Nagy and Neff 2015: 2). Research, then, often simply focuses on ‘what technology makes possible for users’ (Nagy and Neff 2015: 2). In comparison with the domestication approach, it does not offer an equally complex analytical toolset accounting for people’s diverse practices of sense-making regarding media technologies. Even though media’s affordances have been recognized, the extent to which technologies or interfaces inflect people’s practices has generally been over-
Affordances: Interfaces preconditioning practices
37
looked. It is most of the time not further investigated in how far technologies or interfaces actually come to matter for people’s practices. Thus Nicole Zillien has proposed addressing the concept through the perspective of the well-established German research tradition in media sociology (Zillien 2008: 162-163; Zillien and Hargittai 2009). In combination with a medio-sociological perspective affordances can be considered a valuable and necessary theoretical asset for German media and communication research, which generally lacks object-oriented studies (Zillien 2008: 174). In fact a combination of a practice-oriented German media and communication research with the affordance concept has proven very insightful. When putting people’s practices at the centre of analysis it can even be used to counteract simple effect paradigms, as addressed in approaches on media specificities or media’s moulding forces (Hepp 2012: 14/17). In this context more substantial theoretical discussions of the affordance concept can be found in German mediatisation research, where affordances are discussed as one of a number of concepts that integrate a focus on media’s specificities into current media and communication research (Hepp and Hasebrink 2013: 9). Such studies recognize the concept’s value in not reflecting a reductionist perspective on the impact of media technologies on people’s media-related practices. Using the theory of affordances in addition to the domestication concept in a dialectical approach to the analysis of online commenting thus allows an investigation into how far the interfaces of online commenting precondition people’s commenting practices. Other authors have already acknowledged that people’s practices of appropriation are just as important as a technology’s material aspects (Baym and boyd 2012: 326; Marwick and boyd 2014: 1060), that affordances are set within a complex constellation of actors (Eisenlauer 2014: 76-78) and that people need to make sense of affordances (McVeigh-Schultz and Baym 2015: 2). People’s engagement with affordances is thus always situated in specific social contexts, which is why affordances ‘frame but do not determine’ (Livingstone 2008: 403). The attention paid to people’s interpretive flexibility makes the theory a valuable addition for the domestication concept. Nevertheless, a dialectical approach to the interrelation of interfaces and practices in online commenting requires shifting away from affordances’ linear perspective. In this context I shall now turn to Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), which seeks to break outright with linearity by denying the dichotomy of materiality and agency altogether.
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3.3
Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices
Actor-Network-Theory: Assembling interfaces and practices
Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), like the domestication approach and the theory of affordances, contributes to a dialectical approach because it can be used to consider the socio-technical constitution of online commenting. A perspective on online commenting that is inspired by all three approaches considers both the interfaces of online commenting and people’s commenting practices as relevant to a dialectical analysis. Nevertheless and as demonstrated above, domestication and affordances tend to lean towards one side within a dialectical approach. Domestication provides a nuanced perspective on people’s practices of sensemaking, whereas affordances can be used to acknowledge how far a technology preconditions certain practices. An ANT-inspired perspective neither gives primacy to people’s commenting practices nor to the interfaces of online commenting. Instead, it allows for an analysis of how interfaces and practices in their assemblage become constitutive for online commenting. Where the theory of affordances and domestication make a distinction between people’s practices and the materiality of software interfaces, ANT rejects any such dichotomy. Instead, it proposes a complete redefinition of the social. It defines the social as the process of creating assemblages between human and non-human actants (Latour 2005: 4-5/63-64). One of ANT’s central ideas postulates that there is no difference between human and non-human actors. Actors in an actor-network can, on the one hand, be intentionally acting humans – as for example the people who are commenting. On the other hand, they can equally be non-human actors – as for example software interfaces or media devices. That is why ANT considers the difference between the social and the technical to be artificial (Latour 2005: 75-76). It argues that the social is not an a priori force, but that the social – or in other words the assemblage of human and non-human actors – itself needs to become the explanandum (Latour 2005: 5). In that way online commenting can be seen as being constituted through the assemblage of human actors with their commenting practices and the commenting interfaces as non-human actors – among a multitude of other actors involved. Only through their figuration in actor-networks do these actants turn into actors. They do not themselves have any inherent properties and cannot act alone. They can only be made to act within a network (Latour 2005: 46-47). As the ‘essential principle of composition, of linkage, of recruitment, or of enrolment’ (Latour 1991: 124)
ANT: Assembling interfaces and practices
39
ANT’s analytical focus, then, lies in the process of translation. It describes how actants obtain a figuration, an identity or form in the constitution of a network. For a dialectical approach ANT thus provides a theoretical framework for analysing how people’s commenting practices and the commenting interfaces in their interrelation constitute online commenting in a specific form. Even if one does not agree with the redefinition of the social as proposed by ANT theorists, the approach remains valuable for media and communication research because of its explicit focus on the different actors that constitute media in their specific form. With reference to contemporary digital media Latour has, for example, pointed out that the digital is not at all virtual, but largely depends on material objects such as satellites, undersea cables, server farms, hard drives, etc. (Latour 2011: 802). According to Nick Couldry (2008) ANT’s value for media and communication studies, therefore, lies in its anti-functionalist approach to analyses of media power. By highlighting the hybridity of networks as socio-technical assemblages, ANT demonstrates that media are not natural occurrences and thus do not by nature have certain impacts. Instead, ANT makes apparent how far ‘[m]edia institutions, whatever the pervasiveness of their reach and however responsive they are to their audiences, remain the beneficiaries of huge and lasting asymmetries in the distribution of symbolic resources’ (Couldry 2008: 99). With reference to online commenting, a dialectical approach inspired by ANT therefore aims to deconstruct how online commenting becomes established in its respective form by retracing step by step the interrelation of human and non-human actors and their figuration in the actor network. For a practice-oriented approach in media and communication research, German sociologist Rainer Diaz-Bone (2011: 7-8) has highlighted the theory’s benefits for its focus on the performativity of objects. In this context, Karin Knorr-Cetina similarly discusses the extent to which media and communication technologies are not only informative, but also performative. They offer people options to carry out specific practices (2012: 175). Noortje Marres has equally stressed the importance of acknowledging the technological substance of media and communication technologies for the political practices of civil society actors (2006: 10). According to Richard Grusin media technologies are thus not simply neutral transmitters, but premediators. Because of their specific assemblage of human and non-human actors, people have learnt to anticipate media technologies’ processes of translation and active transformation (2010: 6/128). Especial-
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Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices
ly with regard to software-based media, ANT has accordingly been applied to study how humans act alongside software-based non-human actors (Niederer and van Dijck 2010; Paasonen 2014; Rodgers 2015). But ANT does not deny people’s role as agents of change within digital media (Domingo 2015: 71; Plesner 2009: 623-624). Instead, the strict focus on media’s heterogeneity prevents ANT from promoting deterministic or linear ideas of technological influence on people’s communication (Couldry 2008: 99; van Dijck 2012: 151). For a dialectical approach in the analysis of online commenting it thus emphasises that all human and non-human actors are equally relevant to the constitution of online commenting. ANT thus shares with the theory of affordances the recognition that the materiality of software interfaces matters to the commenting practices that can unfold within online comment forums. But compared with the affordance concept, Andreas Hepp highlights ANT’s merits in stressing the networked heterogeneity of both human and non-human actors, while equally acknowledging media specificities in people’s practices of appropriation (Hepp 2012: 17). Furthermore, instead of the linear and static relation between software interfaces and people’s practices as promoted by the theory of affordances, ANT’s networked perspective assumes that all human and non-human actors need to find an equilibrium in their network constellation. In other words, it promotes a process perspective, which can be used to analyse how online commenting becomes stabilized at the interrelation of all human and non-human actors involved in a network. This idea of durability is summarized in Latour’s well-known notion that technology is society made durable. In particular, technology or non-human actors are seen as the stabilizing elements that allow for anticipation and predictability (Latour 1991: 111). The typical characteristics of online commenting thus stem from a stable and increasingly black-boxed network, in which the assembled elements can no longer be differentiated and identified. But ANT, just like the theory of affordances, overlooks how typical commenting practices equally contribute to making networks durable. In this context German sociologist Hubert Knoblauch argues that the idea of black boxes focuses too much on the assemblage of actors without acknowledging people’s meaning production and sense-making (Knoblauch 2013b: 38). The concept of communicative genre, which has a long-standing tradition in German socio-linguistic and ethnomethodologically inspired research, rather highlights that not only the
ANT: Assembling interfaces and practices
41
assemblage of actors leads to predictability in a given situation, but equally people’s habitualised practices and sense-making (Knoblauch and Günthner 1995; Luckmann 1986). ANT’s disinterest in the dynamics of actions (Couldry 2008: 101) or the invisibility of users (Cockburn 1992: 34) is especially problematic in the context of media and communication studies, where objects are created for ongoing practices of interpretation and meaning making (Couldry 2008: 102). ANT appears to treat human actors as having no previous expertise in cultural forms (Williams 1975) when entering a new assemblage. Due to this lack of interest in interpretive agency and people’s practices, ANT effectively neglects the role of culture, as observed by both Nick Couldry (2008: 103) and José van Dijck (2012: 151). But this critique should not be understood as undermining ANT’s value completely: ‘We need, in other words, to think about how people’s cognitive and emotive frameworks are shaped by the underlying features of the networks in which they are situated. If expressed in these terms, there is a great deal to be learnt from ANT in understanding everyday practices around media.’ (Couldry 2008: 103-104) One way to do so might be by broadening ANT’s scope and not only seeing stability in networks as an aspect of non-human actors, but equally by seeing it as grounded in human actors, in their commenting practices and sense-making as proposed by the domestication approach.
3.4
A consolidating framework for a dialectical approach
Each theory presented here contributes a different perspective towards a dialectical approach to the analysis of online commenting – namely a circular (domestication), linear (affordances) or networked (ANT) view on the interrelation of commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices. A view inspired by the domestication approach sees interfaces and practices as reflecting back upon each other in a continuous circular process. Once the commenting interfaces are produced and made available, people develop their commenting practices based on the restraints and possibilities they encounter on the interface. These practices reflect back upon how the interface is reproduced, thereby establishing a circular
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process of constant re-articulation. This focus on people’s diverse commenting practices goes further than recognizing that people can flexibly interpret technologies, as proposed by the theory of affordances. However, the idea of affordances contributes an explicit focus on how the software interfaces behind online comment forums constrain and enable people’s commenting practices in the first place. Despite acknowledging people’s interpretive flexibility, it proposes a linear perspective, where commenting interfaces are intentionally designed to shape people’s commenting practices. Consequently, it also describes a more static perspective on the interrelation of interfaces and practices in online commenting. At this point Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) is a valuable asset to a dialectical approach by arguing that people’s commenting practices always need to be seen in their assemblage or networked figuration with commenting interfaces. Contrary to the static view of affordances, ANT’s strict focus on the interrelation of human and non-human actors expresses ideas of fluidity as well as of durability. Networks remain fragile and need to be constantly reproduced through the contribution of both people’s commenting practices and the commenting interfaces. Only through this interrelation is online commenting constantly reproduced as a networked assemblage. A dialectical approach is inspired by the domestication concept and its perspective on the inherent potentials of technologies on the one side, and people’s contextualized practices of sense-making regarding these technologies on the other (Silverstone 2002: 762; Silverstone and Hirsch 1992: 1-2). However, as I have argued above, a modification to the original idea of mediation as a dialectical process seems necessary in order to account for domestication’s shortcomings in empirically addressing the constraints of media technologies. To this end, I rely on the theory of affordances and ANT. All three approaches mutually inform a dialectical approach in the analysis of online commenting because of their attention to the interrelation of technologies and practices. But as demonstrated in this chapter, all three approaches also differ in their analytical focus, how they conceptualize technology and agency, what temporal perspective they put forward and how they see media become stabilized in a specific form (cf. Table 3.1).
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Table 3.1: Comparison of domestication approach, theory of affordances, Actor-Network Theory Domestication
Affordances
Actor-NetworkTheory
Interfaces and practices
co-producing
preconditioning
assembling
Socio-technical interrelation
circular
linear
networked
Analytical focus
practices and sensemaking
communicative practices or production practices
associations of human and non-human actors
Technology
inherent potentials constrained by context
enabling and constraining practices
transforming and making durable
Agency
contextualized practices
interpretive flexibility
emerging from networks
process of (re)articulation
static
fluid and durable
temporal fixations in practices
anticipating practices in technology
predictability through black-boxed networks
Temporality
Stabilizing form
Despite their differences, based on their common underlying assumptions a consolidation seems beneficial. Other authors have made similar connections. Sonia Livingstone, for instance, has pointed out that the affordances of online media need to be seen in relation to people’s communicative practices and their specific social context (Livingstone 2008: 403). Joshua McVeigh-Schultz and Nancy Baym (McVeigh-Schultz and Baym 2015: 2) equally highlight that affordances always need to be interpreted and attributed with meanings. Knut H. Sørensen, a science and technology scholar interested in media technologies, is influenced by all three approaches in his analytical attempts ‘to get inside the black-box of technology’ (Sørensen 2006: 44). Whereas ANT and affordances consider how producers implement presumed ways of using a particular technology in the design process, domestication acknowledges the active and sometimes resistant role of users as consumers and interpreters of technologies (Sørensen 2006: 4446).
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Theorising the interrelation of interfaces and practices
A consolidating theoretical framework, which takes insights from domestication, affordances and ANT, then, points to the different levels of analysis that a dialectical approach towards online commenting requires. On the one hand, it entails the analysis of people’s diverse practices of sense-making regarding a media technology as proposed by the domestication approach. On the other, the production and design of media technologies with their specific restraining potentials need to be interrogated, as put forward by the theory of affordances. For an analysis of online commenting, this means an investigation on the level of people’s diverse commenting practices as well as on the level of the commenting interfaces. Beyond that, their interrelation also needs to be addressed in order to assess how online commenting becomes established in a specific form through the assemblage of interfaces and practices, as ANT proposes. With a dialectical approach, I therefore aim to overcome an inclination in current research that tends to focus on selective sides in the socio-technical constitution of contemporary media. Many approaches single out aspects in their socio-technical interrelation and by doing so necessarily neglect other dimensions. Ignacio Siles and Pablo Boczkowski (2012: 233) argue in this context that more STS-inspired research often focuses on materiality and agency, whereas media and communication studies concentrates on agency and content. They propose texto-material assemblages as an analytical concept that merges these perspectives by concentrating on materiality and content in the use of media technologies. Such a consolidation, however, would still dismiss the importance of people’s diverse practices of sense-making regarding media technologies and the content they transmit. A dialectical approach, as proposed here, finds a solution in ANT’s focus on the assemblage of different human and non-human actors. First, the analysis needs to be carried out on the level of interfaces and practices separately in order to be able to subsequently make statements about their interrelation. The outcome of such an analysis can provide insights into how online commenting is made durable or becomes black-boxed (Latour 1991: 111), as ANT would argue, or becomes temporarily fixated (Hartmann 2008: 411) as the domestication approach postulates. Consequently, this enables an analysis of how distinct patterns of online commenting become established at the interrelation of commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices. The results will thus provide nuanced insights into the phenomenon of online commenting in contemporary societies.
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Based on the domestication concept, the theory of affordances and ActorNetwork-Theory (ANT) I have thus sketched out a theoretical framework that establishes three levels for the empirical analysis of online commenting: people’s commenting practices, the software interfaces of online commenting as well as their interrelation. Beyond these levels of analysis, I have yet to spell out the objective of a dialectical approach when analysing online commenting specifically and digital media in general. In the following, I will therefore turn more extensively towards the case of online commenting as a form of civic communication and discuss the relevance of its socio-technical constitution.
4
Strategies and tactics of online commenting
This book aims to describe how distinct forms of civic online communication become established within online commenting. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, online commenting is constituted through people’s commenting practices, the inherent potentials or affordances of the commenting interfaces and through their assemblage in relatively durable networks. On each of these levels online commenting can be empirically described in order to assess its role as a form of civic communication in contemporary societies. Such an analysis not only investigates pre-defined forms of civic online communication that are derived from different models of democratic participation, but also addresses the previously identified research deficit in relation to the range of commenting practices that people engage in (cf. chapter 2). Furthermore, it provides explanations into why online commenting becomes established in a specific form through the interrelation between interfaces and practices. Ultimately, it also investigates the power relation between the providers of commenting interfaces and the people who comment therein. Hence a dialectical approach does not neglect the agency of citizens over the increasing importance of digital media technologies. Or as José van Dijck and Thomas Poell argue: ‘[o]ne-sided interpretations prevent us not only from comprehending how the rise of social platforms threatens the democratic character of public space but also from appreciating the space of agency afforded to citizens and public institutions in actively shaping the platform society.’ (van Dijck and Poell 2015: 5) In order to consider how people’s practices evolve ‘through, with and alongside media’ (Hayles 2012: 1) in online commenting, I will further rely on Michel de Certeau’s (1984) theory of everyday practice. It helps in grasping the dialectical interrelation between people’s commenting practices and commenting interfaces © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 A. Mollen, Digital Spaces of Civic Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0_4
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because it differentiates between the practices of producers on the one hand and those of the consumers on the other. The theory highlights the powerful position that producers take when producing objects of consumption, whereas consumers must act based on what has been produced. While de Certeau did not originally discuss technology or the interrelation of materiality and agency, I shall adopt his theory to consider how people’s commenting practices necessarily develop based on the specific way in which commenting interfaces are produced. In doing so, de Certeau’s theorisations can be seen as combining aspects of the domestication approach, the theory of affordances as well as of ANT. On the basis of de Certeau’s ideas, I develop the concept of digital spaces of civic communication as the objective of this dialectical analysis. De Certeau’s theory is helpful for a dialectical approach to the analysis of online commenting because it distinguishes between practices as either strategies or tactics. While strategies are connected with a powerful position and the production of places, tactics are reactive and therefore hold a weaker position: ‘I call a strategy the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that become possible as soon as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific institution) can be isolated. It postulates a place that can be delimited as its own and serve as the base from which relations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats (customers or competitors, enemies, the country surrounding the city, objectives and objects of research, etc.) can be managed. As in management, every “strategic” rationalization seeks first of all to distinguish its “own” place, that is, the place of its own power and will, from an “environment”.’ (de Certeau 1984: 35-36) Tactics can only make use of the places they encounter. They can manipulate and remodel, but they necessarily act based on what has been created through strategies: ‘By contrast with strategy (…), a tactic is a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. No delimitation of an exteriority, then, provides it with the condition necessary for autonomy. The space of a tactic is the space of the other. Thus it must play on and with a terrain imposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign power. (…) It does not, therefore, have the options of planning general strategy and viewing the
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adversary as a whole within a district, visible, and objectifiable space. It operates in isolated actions, blow by blow. It takes advantage of “opportunities” and depends on them, being without any base where it could stockpile its winnings, build up its own position, and plan raids.’ (de Certeau 1984: 36-37) Strategies can, therefore, be located on the side of production and in the design of the interfaces of online commenting, whereas tactics are the prerogative of the people in their commenting practices. This distinction facilitates a recognition of how people actively develop tactics of commenting in their appropriation of commenting interfaces on the one hand, while acknowledging that interfaces – among other restraining factors – provide a highly specific and strategically preconditioned place for people to develop their tactics on the other. Providers and developers have the power to create the commenting interfaces according to their own interests. But commenters have to act based on what has been strategically produced and inscribed into the commenting interface. De Certeau, then, sees a general tension between people’s tactics of appropriation and providers’ strategic processes of production. In order to account for the underlying power dimension in the relation between strategies and tactics, he switches to a polemological terminology more ‘concerned with battles or games between the strong and the weak, and with the “actions” which remain possible for the latter’ (de Certeau 1984: 34). When thinking of commenting as tactics1 and comment forum interfaces as the places produced by strategic action, the battle that de Certeau refers to relates to the fact that commenters hold a weak position, as they have to act within the preconditioned place of the commenting interfaces. As expressed in the theory of affordances people are not completely free in their practices, but act within the frame of what a technology affords.
1
By conceptualizing online commenting as tactics, I do not refer to the idea of tactical media – a form of media activism that emerged in the 1990s. Although online commenting – especially trolling – can be used for such intentionally subversive acts, as has been demonstrated for example by the Anonymous collective (Coleman, 2013), tactical media is based on the idea that established media can be used, transformed, and manipulated so that they transmit activist messages and become an expression of resistance and advocacy (Garcia 1997, Liu 2012: 12). The key to tactical media is an understanding of their place between the strategic demand for revolution and the defeatism of a subversion that always depends on the power that it seeks to subvert. (Cubitt 2006: 42). This idea gained relevance through forms of hacktivism, open software projects, DdoS attacks, etc.
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Strategies and tactics of online commenting
Weak in that sense means first and foremost that people react to the environment that they encounter, as opposed to being the producers of these environments. Nevertheless, consumers are not simply passive enactors of practices that have been inscribed into a place, as de Certeau, significantly, points out. Instead they poach, they remodel, and they change what the place offers them, thereby seizing the opportunities to establish their own diverse practices. Thus de Certeau’s approach facilitates a recognition of people’s active engagement with and appropriation of technologies. In the first two parts of this chapter I will describe how commenters and producers ascribe meaning and establish form within the practices of online commenting as well as within the interfaces of online commenting. The third part of this chapter will address the spaces of online commenting that result from its socio-technical constitution. According to de Certeau places are the outcome of the strategies of producers when creating objects of consumption. They prescribe anticipations of ideal usage. This notion of place is helpful because it enables us to map the anticipations that become inscribed into commenting interfaces. Yet according to de Certeau these places are always fictional. Only through people’s practices of appropriation are places enacted as spaces (de Certeau 1984: 117118). I conclude this chapter by developing the concept of digital spaces of civic communication in order to assess the role of online commenting as a form of civic communication. In this context, the notion of space can be used to address ‘the accessibility of viable public spheres in the life-worlds of citizens’ (Dahlgren 2009: 115). At the same time, with reference to de Certeau it also helps us to analytically and empirically grasp the socio-technical constitution of digitally mediated forms of civic agency.
4.1
The practices of online commenting
The similarity between Michel de Certeau’s approach towards ‘The Practice of Everyday Life’ (1984) and the domestication approach stems from the former’s concern with theorising consumption not as a passive activity but as an active undertaking and another form of production (de Certeau 1984: xii). In an analysis of online commenting, de Certeau’s ideas are useful in describing how people establish various commenting practices. De Certeau’s aim was to question ‘the
The practices of online commenting
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framework of the levelling rationalities’ (de Certeau 1984: 1) as expressed, for example, in the presumed uniformity of a mass society. His interest lay in the incoherence of individual agency (de Certeau 1984: ix) in relation to what people do when consuming (media) products: ‘Thus, once the images broadcast by television and the time spent in front of the TV set have been analyzed, it remains to be asked what the consumer makes of these images and during these hours. The thousands of people who buy a health magazine, the customers in a supermarket, the practitioners of urban space, the consumers of newspaper stories and legends – what do they make of what they “absorb”, receive and pay for? What do they do with it?’ (de Certeau 1984: 31) Taking speech acts as an example – and with reference to de Saussure’s distinction between langue (system) and parole (act) – de Certeau identifies four characteristics of practices of consumption: realization, appropriation, contract and present. A practice is, then, a realized act within a system of action, which the individual has appropriated. Furthermore, it is oriented towards an interactant, thereby constituting a relation, and is situated within a specific context, forming a presence dependent on time and space (de Certeau 1984: xiii/33). In regard to online commenting, one can observe with de Certeau that commenting underlies a system of action that is collectively produced but individually enacted. With each individual act of commenting its system of action is reproduced. The diverse ways in which people comment necessarily reflect back on how online commenting is perceived. In doing so people in their commenting practices ascribe meaning to online commenting and stabilize it in a specific form. This approach to practices resembles in many points more recent discussions on practice theory. A media as practice approach argues that postulations about contemporary media should not be based on assumptions and speculations, but on empirical investigations of what people actually do with media (Couldry 2004, 2012). By focusing on practices, the analysis does not concentrate on structures, discourses, systems, the individual or interactions (Postill 2010: 1), but rather interrogates: ‘what are people (individuals, groups, institutions) doing in relation to media across a whole range of situations and contexts? How is people's
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Strategies and tactics of online commenting
media-related practice, in turn, related to their wider agency?’ (Couldry 2012: 37) The value of a practice-oriented approach for an empirical analysis of online commenting firstly lies in its ability to identify typical commenting practices based on the similarity and regularity of their occurrences. Secondly, it spotlights the process of how people collectively make sense of online commenting. Based on an overview of different accounts of sociology’s practice theory, Theodore Schatzki formulates a common understanding of ‘practices as embodied, materially mediated arrays of human activity centrally organized around shared practical understanding’ (Schatzki 2001: 11). When commenting online, people thus need to share a practical understanding of how online commenting works. In practice theory three components are usually identified as central for this shared understanding: routine, embodiment and observability. Practices as routine is one of the most frequently recurring elements in different accounts of practice theory. It connects practice and agency by considering everyday agency as a part of practice (Hörning 2004: 30), not from the perspective of a voluntaristic theory of action but as habits and routines (Warde 2014: 283/292). Practices are a ‘routinized type of behaviour’ (Reckwitz 2002: 249), which individually contribute towards reproducing a practice. Their routinized occurrences consequently result in the observability of practices, implying that practices can be understood not only by participants but also by observers who are equipped with the relevant cultural expertise (Reckwitz 2002: 250). This shifts analytical attention away from the individual and towards the embodiment of practices through shared skills and competencies (Schatzki 2001: 12). In this context, individuals can be understood ‘as the “carrier” (Träger) of a practice – and, in fact, of many different practices which need not be coordinated with one another’ (Reckwitz 2002: 250). Previous and continuous engagement with habitual and routinized practices contribute towards the embodiment of capacities and knowledge about certain procedures, which individuals retain as specific competencies and retrieve in adequate circumstances (Barnes 2001: 28-29; Warde 2014: 292). That is why practices need to be seen as collective accomplishments: ‘Shared practices are the accomplishments of competent members of collectives. They are accomplishments readily achieved by, and routinely to
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be expected of members acting together, but they nonetheless have to be generated on every occasion, by agents concerned all the time to retain coordination and alignment with each other in order to bring them about. Although they are routine at the collective level, they are not routine at the individual level.’ (Barnes 2001: 32-33) Mutually shared practices, then, become incrementally connected with specific social situations and settings. They become recognized as particular phenomena in these settings, just like hate speech is considered a typical practice of online commenting. De Certeau equally recognizes routines, systems of actions, interactants’ mutual orientation towards each other, the importance of context, etc. in his account of everyday practices. He even addresses the question of the individually carried out action and the order that underlies such agency. Again with reference to speech acts he concludes that ‘the speech act is at the same time a use of language and an operation performed on it’ (de Certeau 1984: 33). The underlying order behind everyday practices is thus not completely static but subject to transformation due to continuous individual enactment over time. A practice approach therefore permits conclusions to be drawn about media practices in a specific societal field (Postill 2010: 15-16). Research on the mediatisation of politics has previously focused on the practices of specific political actors, ranging from the practices of policy makers (McCallum and Waller 2013), politicians (Driessens et al. 2010) or activists (Barassi and Treré 2012; Kaun 2015; Kubitschko 2015). But a focus on the media practices of citizens is still relatively rare (see Woodstock 2014 for an exception). By conceptualizing online commenting as a civic media practice, it can be described as a multifaceted rather than a monolithic communicative act, and can therefore be positioned between the extremes of hate speech and incivility at one end of the spectrum and ideals of deliberation at the other. A practice approach investigates people’s diverse commenting practices in order to assess their role as a form of civic online communication. Insights into online commenting stem not from its technological potential but from people’s actual commenting practices. Especially where digital media increasingly depend on people’s co-creation (Roig et al. 2009; Roig et al. 2014) an analysis of the collectively enacted and observable practices is beneficial for understanding what these media come to signify.
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Strategies and tactics of online commenting
De Certeau’s notion of tactics is, then, a valid approach to studying people’s practices in the technologically preconditioned places of digital media, as a number of previous studies demonstrate. They conceptualize people’s mediarelated practices as tactics that explicitly oppose the strategies of social media companies. Sander De Ridder (2015: 367), for instance, analysed how teenagers make social networking sites habitable in relation to the heteronormative assumptions inscribed into their design. Veronica Barassi and Emiliano Treré similarly described how student activists established critical media tactics to oppose the neoliberal agenda of the social networking site they were using (2012: 1277). Kirsty Best and Nathan Tozer (2012) identified more generally that users either modified their use, modified the technology, decreased their use or accepted the technology when they experienced controls and restrictions through media technologies. While these studies highlight the potential for resistance in contemporary digital media, tactics still always operate in the place of the other. When considering this distinction, it becomes clear that people’s capacity for resistance is mostly determined by the opportunities social media companies provide for people to act tactically. These opportunities have certainly multiplied in digital media, but mostly because people’s contributions are now a central element in the business models of media companies (Gerlitz and Helmond 2013; Olsson and Svensson 2012). They still largely determine where, when and the extent to which they want people to contribute. A media as practice approach towards online commenting thus acknowledges that commenting as a practice is intrinsically entrenched in commenting interfaces as the contexts of its occurrences. But it does not provide a detailed perspective on their socio-technical constitution. To analyse how online commenting is constituted as a form of civic communication, a media as practice approach therefore needs to be broadened out to account for the technological context in which commenting practices occur. This in turn necessitates addressing how meaning and form become inscribed into the interfaces of online commenting.
The interfaces of online commenting
4.2
55
The interfaces of online commenting
Interfaces in a computational context are manifold. In this analysis only the commenting interfaces that people access when entering a comment forum are of interest. In other words, the interfaces in this analysis are exclusively graphical user interfaces (GUIs). In online commenting, these interfaces are produced by digital media companies, software developers, news organisations, news rooms and news workers for their news media websites, their blogs or related outlets. GUIs are now the dominant form through which the average user interacts with and commands computational devices. For people without programming skills, they have largely replaced text-based command lines. GUIs thus represent an interface between the human and the computer (Gane and Beer 2008: 55; Poster 1995: 20). As a point of contact or a membrane, as the space of in-betweenness, as a navigator of boundaries or as the translator between the machine and the user (Gane and Beer 2008: 53-54), interfaces are not considered purely technical objects, but rather as socio-technical entities. Theorising interfaces as a connecting element between the human and the computer fits within a media as practice approach. Such conceptualizations of interfaces consider how the technology behind an interface and people’s practices with regard to an interface interrelate. Consequently, they acknowledge how interfaces transport specific meanings with them. In this context, different authors reject the idea of translucent, seamless or transparent interfaces. Sybille Lammes (2016), for example, criticizes research in the field of computer science, human-computer-interaction (HCI) and also new media studies for its conceptualization of interfaces as ‘transparent membranes (…) that merge[s] invisibly and effortlessly with daily practices’ (Lammes 2016: 3). These fields of research do not sufficiently consider how people come to integrate interfaces into their daily routine and how interfaces become formative: ‘Such approaches understand interfaces as bringing us direct, unaltered and immediate access to other realms of knowledge or information. We just have to click on an icon to be brought there or for “it” to be brought to us. (…) In line with this double-click ideal, such theoretical conceptions of the interface don’t do justice to the fact that information is always transformed via the interface.’ (Lammes 2016: 4)
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Strategies and tactics of online commenting
Lev Manovich puts forward a more technical focus on interfaces by proposing his idea of the ‘non-transparency of the code’ (Manovich 2001: 64). He argues that with symbolic communication being increasingly transmitted and accessed through the internet and mostly through web browsers, it is constituted by the logic of the underlying interfaces: ‘In short, far from being a transparent window into the data inside a computer, the interface brings with it strong messages of its own’ (Manovich 2001: 65). But Nicholas Gane and Dave Beer point out that Manovich’s reflections are inconsistent. On the one hand, he argues that interfaces have the power to control what people can do through them, yet he also perceives interfaces as instruments in the hands of active users who can exercise control when operating computers through them (Gane and Beer 2008: 59). While Manovich recognizes that previous cultural forms always inform how interfaces become established (Manovich 2001: 70-71), he does not go as far as considering the integration of interfaces into people’s everyday life and sociality. Nevertheless, there seems to be a widespread consensus that the interfaces of digital media are inherently connected with people’s practices. Alexander Galloway has argued, for instance, that the social milieu external to a technical system is always inherent in an interface. Consequently ‘an interface is not a thing, an interface is always an effect. It is always a process or a translation’ (Galloway 2012: 33). It would, therefore, be inadequate to describe them as having ‘no mode of representation on that which passes through it’ (Galloway 2012: 39-40). That is why the social always becomes inscribed into and is visible within the technical features of an interface. Interfaces are thus always produced with specific meanings attached to them. A dialectical approach in the analysis of online commenting aims at empirically describing these technically inscribed meanings. Acknowledging that meaning can be found within interfaces does not entail subscribing to technologically deterministic ideas about a causal effect on people’s practices. Against this background Gane and Beer propose Adriana de Souza e Silva’s notion of social interfaces as a further analytical entry point in sociological research (2008: 66). De Souza e Silva specifically addresses how social meaning in relation to an interface is not only created in the production process, but equally in people’s integration and appropriation of it within their everyday life (de Souza e Silva 2006: 262) – or in other words in the process of domesticating interfaces. As they become increasingly embedded within people’s everyday life, interfaces gain relevance as the (non-transparent) frame through which
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people encounter the everyday (Dourish 2007: 1). Hence Gane and Beer argue for making interfaces an object of sociological inquiry: ‘Interfaces order and facilitate information access, and enable the reproduction and consumption of culture in particular ways and in particular places. For this reason, both the conceptual underpinnings and materialities of interfaces require critical interrogation.’ (Gane and Beer 2008: 6768) At this point, software and platform studies can be seen as having started to address how interfaces become produced and developed. They make software the explanandum by investigating ‘the role of software in contemporary culture, and the cultural and social forces that are shaping the development of software itself’ (Manovich 2013: 10). But due to their exclusive focus on the computational understanding of platforms and their historical development (Bogost and Montfort 2009), such research is to a large extent still devoid of users and their practices (Apperley and Parikka 2015: 6). As an additional perspective towards a media as practice approach, an analytical focus on the meanings that become inscribed into the interfaces of online commenting can, however, address how online commenting becomes established as a form of civic communication between people’s tactics of appropriation and providers’ strategies of production. By further drawing on Michel de Certeau’s theory the commenting interface in its technical appearance can be seen as strategically produced. Considering commenting interfaces as the outcome of providers’ strategies of production allows us to investigate how features on the interface are intended to promote specific forms of online commenting. De Certeau describes how producers in their strategies of production inscribe normative ideas about people’s practices into their objects of consumption (de Certeau 1984: 100). The strategically planned interface sets specific preconditions for people’s commenting practices. But initially these norms and anticipations for people’s practices remain a purely theoretical idea. At this point, it makes sense for an analysis of interfaces to follow de Certeau’s line of thought further. He introduces the notion of places that become created through producers’ strategies: ‘A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes the
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Strategies and tactics of online commenting
possibility of two things being in the same location (place). (…) A place is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions.’ (de Certeau 1984: 117) Because of their orderly constellation places can be mapped (de Certeau 1984: 118). In other words, they can be described by positioning each element with relation to all other elements that constitute the place. For an analysis of the interfaces of online commenting, this implies that interfaces can be described based on the technical features that they contain and based on the fictional ideas and anticipations regarding people’s practices that providers have inscribed into them. However, such an analysis needs to move beyond seeing interfaces as either manipulating people into certain ways of communicating or as interfaces being mere instruments in the hands of the powerful masses of users. In other words, platforms or interfaces should not be considered as either powerful ‘puppet masters’ or as easily influenced ‘reeds in a wind tunnel’ (Clark et al. 2014: 1460). Instead, the technology should be analysed as a material software interface with tighter or looser social settings in which people’s practices unfold (Papacharissi 2009: 215). The analysis of interfaces is thus incrementally interlinked with the analysis of people’s practices. In this context, a number of studies have analysed how the design of digital media platforms and interfaces matter to people’s practices within these digital media. But in general this research still sees people as either appropriating media technologies (Bakardjieva 2006; boyd 2008; Kaun and Stiernstedt 2014; Kavada 2009; Livingstone 2007) or as being the enactors of implied forms of ideal usage (Alby and Zucchermaglio 2007; Colbjørnsen 2014; Gordon and Baldwin-Philippi 2014; Graham and Whalen 2008). This divided perspective on the interrelation of software interfaces and people’s practices seems to result from the site where the research was conducted – either with people before the screen or with web designers and media companies during the design process. On an empirical level their interrelation still remains difficult to grasp. But acknowledging that interfaces are produced with specific social meanings implied opens up the possibility of an ideological critique (Crawford and Gillespie 2016; Gillespie 2010) or an architectural analysis (Papacharissi 2009). Such approaches entail engaging with the production process, the technical de-
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sign of interfaces as well as their discursive positioning (Gillespie 2010: 349). Their underlying assumption stems from a social construction of technology (SCOT) perspective, which highlights how meanings become inscribed and interpreted in technologies (Bijker et al. 1987; Bijker and Law 1992; Woolgar 1991). These constructivist approaches analyse technologies passing through phases of interpretive flexibility, in which the diverse meanings which become associated with and interpreted into new technological products are still in flux. Eventually a technology finds stability and closure, meaning that a form of that technology becomes recognized as dominant (Pinch and Bijker 1984: 421/424). The ideological critique proposed by Crawford and Gillespie (2016) for studying the politics of digital media platforms (Gillespie 2010) can be seen as an analysis of how digital media companies inscribe their mostly profit-oriented interests into digital interfaces in the process of reaching closure. Crawford and Gillespie, for example, demonstrate the complexity behind the superficially simple technical feature of flagging systems in social networking sites: ‘While a flag may appear to be single data point – something is reported or it is not – this simplicity belies a tangle of system designs, multiple actors and intentions, assertions and emotions (…) Multiple forces shape its use: corporate strategies, programming cultures, public policy, user tactics and counter-tactics, morals, habits, rhetorics, and interfaces (…)’ (Crawford and Gillespie 2016: 411) The authors, consequently, show how flagging systems become tools for promoting the comparatively cheap self-regulation of unwanted content by users, instead of the company providing that service. Furthermore, flags work as an external legitimation once the company makes the decision to alter or remove content, thereby relieving itself of its responsibilities (Crawford and Gillespie 2016: 412). Similarly Carolin Gerlitz and Anne Helmond (2013) show how Facebook’s social plugins are informed by the company’s interest in expanding its social media buttons to pervade the entire web in the interest of an all-encompassing data-mining endeavour (Gerlitz and Helmond 2013: 1354). For a digital media company wanting to impose its interests the most effective method thus seems to be the technical programming of their interface in order to shape people’s behaviour in desirable ways. This process can in fact be repeatedly observed for Twit-
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Strategies and tactics of online commenting
ter, whose attempts to become more profitable is continuously expressed in the alterations of its technical features . But Twitter as an example also demonstrates how people oppose and resist what providers want to impose on them. While people’s participation in digital media can be understood as coded participation (Crawford and Gillespie 2016: 411), this does not imply any sort of causal idea of influence. Research showing how the same platform is appropriated quite differently in distinct cultural contexts supports this claim (Graham et al. 2014). People resist, they re-interpret, they find alternative ways of doing things within digital media. In short, they act tactically in de Certeau’s terminology. Resistance in people’s practices is, for example, expressed in their rejection of certain technical features (Barassi and Treré 2012: 1280). Alternatively, people can voice their discontent and force companies to alter their interface settings, as for example happened after Facebook introduced its Newsfeed in 2006 and users demanded changes in privacy settings (boyd 2008). But resistance is also expressed in everyday forms of the use of digital media. People do not automatically accept the new settings and features introduced by digital media companies. They assess these functions quite critically and consciously reject many of the ideal types of usage that media companies inscribe into their interfaces (Bertel 2014; Best and Tozer 2012; Grosser 2014; Lyons et al. 2011). Such resistant tactics do not depend on people being technology experts. They simply appear in people’s everyday practices. Hate speech and trolling in online commenting can in that sense be considered as a rejection of the ideas of egalitarian discourse that underlies many online comment forums. Consequently, interpretive flexibility and closure do not only concern the artefact but equally people’s practices as a study by Ignacio Siles (2011) demonstrates. Siles analysed from a constructivist perspective how both blogging technology as well as the content that was published in blogs – thus the practice of blogging – moved from phases of interpretive flexibility to a state of closure in parallel ways. His study, therefore, demonstrates how technology cannot be seen as distinct from people’s practices in digital media. In a de Certeauian sense, the place of an interface only describes a fictional idea. That is why a dialectical 2
http://mashable.com/2014/08/20/twitter-timeline-changes-confirmed/ http://mashable.com/2014/08/22/twitter-users-timeline-changes/ http://mashable.com/2015/11/03/twitter-broke-my-heart/
The interfaces of online commenting
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approach in the analysis of online commenting aims at describing how digital spaces of civic communication emerge at the interrelation between commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices.
4.3
The spaces of online commenting
The two previous parts of this chapter have discussed how both the providers of commenting interfaces as well as the people using these interfaces establish distinct meanings for online commenting. As said before, it remains difficult to empirically grasp how these two sides of online commenting interrelate. Research often either addresses the technology or the practice side of digital media. By describing online commenting through the notion of space, I propose a concept that merges these two perspectives when researching digital media. De Certeau discusses spaces in contrast to the strategically planned places that producers create. Although places can be mapped, according to de Certeau, they do not prescribe which route (tour) individuals must take (de Certeau 1984: 118). Instead, they offer an indefinite number of possible routes along which individuals can potentially navigate. The actual routes that individuals take in their practices can instead be described through the concept of space: ‘On this view, in relation to place, space is like the word when it is spoken, that is, when it is caught in the ambiguity of an actualization, transformed into a term dependent upon many different conventions, situated as the act of a present (or of a time), and modified by the transformations caused by successive contexts. (…) In short, space is a practiced place. Thus the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers. In the same way, an act of reading is the space produced by the practice of a particular place: a written text, i.e., a place constituted by a system of signs.’ (de Certeau 1984: 117) As the above quote demonstrates, spaces do not only apply to de Certeau’s examples and to metaphors relating to urban space. The act of reading also produces a space. In the same way, online commenting can be described as producing specific spaces of civic online communication.
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Strategies and tactics of online commenting
I therefore propose to conceptualize online commenting as constituting digital spaces of civic communication. This concept describes how digital media become actualized through the interrelation of strategically produced digital media interfaces and people’s related tactical digital media practices. It encompasses the socio-technical constitution of digital media, where both the producers as well as the people using these media associate meaning with a media technology by establishing distinct forms of communication in their practices of production as well as appropriation. These meanings and the established forms of communication can be analysed empirically. The concept thus facilitates an analysis of online commenting which empirically grasps how both commenting interfaces and commenting practices co-constitute forms of civic communication. The concept of digital spaces thus addresses the need for empirical investigation of what people do with digital media in order to understand what these media come to signify, as the media as practice approach postulates (Couldry 2012: 42). Yet it also acknowledges how media technologies matter to people’s appropriation by addressing how the technology is formative for people’s practices. To this extent, the benefits of conceptualizing online commenting as constituting digital spaces of civic communication are threefold. First, the concept allows for an investigation of the entire range of people’s commenting practices as potentially relevant forms of civic online communication. Second, it does not overemphasise the role of technology in people’s practices. Third, it acknowledges a power dimension between providers’ strategies of production and people’s tactics of use. As explicated in previous chapters, research on online commenting has often started with normative assumptions of how online commenting as a form of civic communication should take shape. A dialectical approach describing the digital spaces of civic communication that become constituted through online commenting, however, inductively focuses on people’s commenting practices. It analyses the entire range of commenting practices that people engage in before assessing their relevance as a form of civic online communication. The idea of commenting as tactics views people not as passive consumers of the interfaces of online commenting, but as active appropriators who shape, manipulate, and reinterpret these interfaces in their commenting practices. Hence such an analysis provides an empirical account of what people actually do with the interfaces of
The spaces of online commenting
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online commenting, regardless of providers’ original intentions. People’s commenting practices are thus versatile and to a certain extent emancipated from the intentions that producers inscribed into the commenting interfaces. This allows for an investigation into unexpected forms of civic online communication. Yet people’s commenting practices can only develop based on the strategically produced commenting interfaces. Describing online commenting through the concept of digital spaces thus accounts for technology’s relevance for people’s commenting practices. It specifically acknowledges that the technology is not neutral. In this context, De Certeau’s concept of space highlights why it feels contradictory and why it is deceptive to discursively frame digital media’ technologies as platforms (Gillespie 2010). De Certeau repeatedly relies on metaphors from urban planning to describe how the urban landscape that was designed on the drawing board shapes how people live, move and exist in the city. But it is only through people’s practices of moving through the city that it becomes the dynamic and ambiguous space that we experience everyday. The architectural metaphor is also occasionally used when describing how the technical set-up of digital media shapes people’s practices (Best and Tozer 2012; Freelon 2015; Papacharissi 2009). The idea of platforms, however, expresses the exact opposite. By referring to YouTube’s use of the term, Tarleton Gillespie demonstrates how the term’s apparent neutrality feeds into an image that digital media companies like to propose: ‘This more conceptual use of “platform” leans on all of the term’s connotations: computational, something to build upon and innovate from; political, a place from which to speak and be heard; figurative, in that the opportunity is an abstract promise as much as a practical one; and architectural, in that YouTube is designed as an open-armed, egalitarian facilitation of expression, not an elitist gatekeeper with normative and technical restrictions.’ (Gillespie 2010: 352) As the discussion around non-transparent interfaces has demonstrated, it is essential to acknowledge that the interfaces of online commenting are not neutral. They matter to people’s commenting practices. But despite architectural restrictions, people still establish their practices creatively and to a certain extent in a self-determined way. Thus a description of the spaces of online commenting does not overemphasise the role of technology for people’s practices – as seems
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Strategies and tactics of online commenting
to be a current trend in research on digital media platforms and interfaces (Clark et al. 2014: 1460). This strong focus on media technologies’ restraining or enabling power is not surprising given the technical set-up of many contemporary digital media. In social networking sites numerous technical features simply allow people to either click a button or not. People’s practices are thus severely limited and research indeed learns more by asking people about their interpretations of these heavily restrictive interfaces. However, where people have more opportunities to develop practices, it is worthwhile to analyse in-situ their manifold practices of appropriation. The fact that people are increasingly confronted with more and more intrusive and restrictive digital media interfaces already points towards the relevance of analysing a power relation between providers of digital media and the people using these media. In online commenting, this struggle is reflected in the dialectics of online commenting as demonstrated in previous chapters. Describing online commenting through the concept of digital spaces of civic communication ultimately allows for an inquiry into how far people can resist the normative anticipations that providers inscribe into their commenting interfaces. While for online commenting, resistance might result in undemocratic forms of online hate speech, the general potential for resisting provider inscriptions should be considered a basic democratic principle within societies that are increasingly formed by their reliance on digital media. It therefore becomes important to research the extent to which people can take an active role in shaping what Thomas Poell and José van Dijck have labelled the platform society (van Dijck and Poell 2015: 5). Considering people’s power to resist what becomes inscribed into the interfaces of digital media technologies is thus relevant beyond the case of online commenting. But within online commenting a struggle between the two sides becomes visible, which provides an opening for analysing the different meanings that providers and people associate with online commenting. In order to analyse these two sides, this analysis relies on a multi-method design. It investigates how commenting practices and commenting interfaces co-constitute distinct forms of civic online communication in online commenting.
Part II: Interfaces, practices and interactions in online commenting
5
Research design and method
A dialectical approach aims at describing the digital spaces of civic communication that become constituted in online commenting at the interrelation between commenting interfaces and commenting practices. The different levels of analysis therefore need to be situated both on the technology and agency side of online commenting. The proposed methods to analyse the socio-technical constitution of online commenting and the forms of civic online communication that accompany it are twofold: they consist of an interface analysis as well as an interaction analysis. Both methods are intended to empirically grasp the meanings that providers associate with their commenting interfaces in the production process as well as those that people come to establish with their commenting practices in their appropriation of these interfaces. Their interrelation will be evaluated based on a constant comparison of the provider side with their anticipations for people’s commenting practices and people’s actual commenting practices. The extent to which people retain the ability to act tactically or in other words how far they are able to diverge from the anticipations that providers inscribe into their interfaces is of special interest here. In order to grasp the socio-technical interrelation of commenting interfaces and commenting practices the analysis will thus address the extent to which people’s commenting practices adhere or diverge from provider anticipations, but also how people make use of the interface inscriptions in their commenting practices. Overall, the analysis will provide insights into people’s ability to establish commenting practices irrespective of provider interest. In other words, one central question concerns the level of power and control that providers can exercise over people’s media practices. It thus addresses current debates about the role of media technologies ‘for the redesign of public space’ (van Dijck and Poell 2015: 3), while equally acknowledging people’s ability to appropriate these spaces in emancipated ways. The main focal points in this analysis are the forms of civic communication that emerge in people’s online commenting in a journalistic con© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 A. Mollen, Digital Spaces of Civic Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0_5
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text. While the commenting interfaces are static and do not change with the content under discussion, the same cannot be said about people’s commenting practices. In order to draw conclusions about online commenting as a form of civic communication it is therefore essential to focus on people’s commenting with regard to a civic and political issue. Hence in the following I shall take the euro crisis as a case study.
5.1
The euro crisis as a case study
As discussed above, online commenting is currently perceived quite ambivalently. It is much debated as a repository of incivility, vulgarity and extremism in people’s communication, which has even led national and European legislators to attempt to regulate commenting across news media, blogs, social networking sites and other commenting spaces. These tendencies become especially prominent in political crisis situations like the euro crisis or the refugee crisis. In these contexts studies have revealed people’s inclination towards radical and extremist opinions in their comments (Angouri and Wodak 2014; Baruh and Popescu 2008; Blom et al. 2014; McCosker 2013; Suhay et al. 2015). Such commenting practices are usually against provider interests. Providers constantly struggle to moderate and edit people’s comments in order to keep phenomena like hate speech under control. However, the discrepancies between provider interests and people’s commenting practices when commenting on political crises like the euro crisis exemplify very clearly the dialectic of online commenting. Thus, the euro crisis makes for a fitting case study when analysing the socio-technical constitution of the digital spaces of civic communication that become constituted in online commenting. The euro crisis can be considered a political and civic issue on which people communicate in their online commenting. The crisis developed after the 2007 housing crisis in the US led to a severe financial crisis and subsequently to a global economic crisis. In 2009, several countries in the European Union were in danger of going bankrupt because of their high national debts, a lack of economic competitiveness or the need to bail out banks in the course of a European banking crisis. As a consequence, European institutions and the International Monetary Fund had to step in to provide certain countries with sufficient loans.
The euro crisis as a case study
69
In return, the countries had to comply with strict austerity politics, which often led to social protests due to cuts in the respective countries’ social systems. As a consequence, the viability of the euro as a common currency but also the European project in general increasingly came under question. To this extent the euro crisis can be considered a political issue, because the journalistic reporting on the issue and consequently people’s commenting practices about it situated it in the context of the formal political system. It is equally a civic issue, which highlights the relevance of the crisis for people’s roles as citizens to the extent that ‘we can say that the notion of civic is broader, encompassing the terrain of the public, while it is on this terrain that politics and the political arise’ (Dahlgren 2009: 58). Furthermore, political crisis situations are usually disruptive moments, in which people renegotiate their established conceptions of the status quo. During the euro crisis, citizens across Europe accordingly re-constructed their perception of Europe and the European Union (Hepp et al. 2016). For an analysis of the digital spaces of civic communication, the euro crisis consequently provides many starting points for addressing the forms of civic communication that become established in people’s commenting. The data I rely on in my analysis stem from a research project on ‘The transnationalization of public spheres in the EU’ that was funded by the German Research Foundation from 2003 until 2014 as part of the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Transformations of the State’. In its last phase from 2011 to 2014 the project analysed ‘citizen reactions’1 to the transationalization of public spheres in Europe, especially by analysing citizens’ public connection (Couldry et al. 2007: 5) towards a European public sphere. The main focal point of this project lay in the communicative construction of Europe in the communicative space of a European public sphere (Hepp et al. 2016). The analysis of people’s online commenting on the euro crisis was considered one possible way in which people would connect to a European public sphere. Special attention was given to the question of how far the communicative space of a European public sphere spreads transnationally or rather remains nationally segmented on the internet. Furthermore, it analysed how people voiced their online comments and thus mu-
1
The research project was based at the University of Bremen. The principal investigator was Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp, while the researchers included Monika Elsler, Swantje Lingenberg, Johanna Möller, Anke Offerhaus and myself.
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tually engaged in constructions of the euro crisis, Europe and the EU (Hepp et al. 2016: 117). As will become apparent, my analysis is based on the sample and data analysed in this previous project. It also partly relies on insights from the previous analysis about people’s typical interactions when constructing the euro crisis, Europe and the EU in their online commenting. But with its focus on the sociotechnical constitution of digital spaces of civic communication in people’s online commenting, this study necessarily delves deeper into the interaction analysis and includes an analysis of the commenting technology. But before detailing the analytical steps, the sampling procedure must first be described.
5.2
Sampling
This analysis is carried out on the level of commenting interfaces and commenting practices. A number of sampling steps had to be undertaken in order to identify the commenting interfaces for the analysis and especially for the collection of people’s comments on the euro crisis that are the basis for the second part of the analysis. They consisted of five steps overall: country selection, comment forum selection, selection of the time frame, primary input selection and eventually thread selection. The country selection was predetermined by the overarching research project from which my analysis takes its data. This previous research project compared EU member countries that are very diverse in relation to their size, history in the EU and positioning with regard to the EU. My analysis concentrated on four countries: Austria, France, Germany and Great Britain. Furthermore, with the transnational span of the internet, it was equally possible to identify transnational European commenting spaces. While their relation to the EU is not of primary interest for the interface and interaction analysis in this study, the inclusion of different countries permits commenting interfaces from different journalistic contexts and different political discourse cultures in Europe (Hepp et al. 2014: 147) to be assembled. By including different countries the overall aim was to obtain a diverse sample with potentially many different commenting interfaces and commenting practices. The analysis followed a transcultural comparative approach (Hepp 2009). The main focus was not on comparing country-specific
Sampling
71
commenting interfaces or commenting practices, but rather to identify transcultural forms of civic communication in people’s commenting. The concentration on online commenting in a journalistic context was not pre-determined but rather emerged within the sampling procedure. In order to analyse digital spaces of civic communication, one of the first aims of the sampling process was to generally identify important websites where people could interact and comment on political and civic issues and where they did so actively. The underlying assumption was that generally well-known and intensely connected websites would attract more people commenting. Hence a hyperlink analysis was conducted with the help of a webcrawler (Issuecrawler) (Rogers 2009, 2010) to identify websites that were quite visible and strongly embedded in a hyperlink network of websites focusing on political content. Based on classical forms of network analysis, the assumption behind a webcrawler postulates that the position of a node allows conclusions to be drawn about this node’s prominence in a network (Wasserman and Faust 2007: 172). In hyperlink networks, these nodes are websites that are connected with other websites through incoming and outgoing hyperlinks. Thus, a webcrawler can be used to recognize central and peripheral websites (Stegbauer and Rausch 2006) as well as to display the spectrum of websites with political content for each country in the sample. The first step for starting a webcrawler requires assembling a list of starting URLs. For this analysis, the list of starting points was assembled to consist of the most important political websites for each research country in the sample and for the transnational European level. There are several means to identify important political websites through quantitative measures, e. g. based on page visitors, page views per visitor, time spent on the site, etc. Such measures are often assembled to produce site rankings. The starting list for the webcrawler in this analysis was based on several blog rankings, search engine results as well as the Alexa top site ranking in order to identify a number of important political websites for each country in the sample. These sites were often news media websites, professional or amateur political blogs and to a much lesser extent websites of institutions for political education or governmental websites. In order to be included in the starting list, these websites did not have to offer spaces for commenting. The webcrawler catches all outgoing and incoming links from these starting points in a multi-step procedure, eventually building a network of interlinked
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websites. Its results, consequently, provide an overview of the central political websites for each country in the sample. Compared to the website rankings that also displayed highly frequented websites with political content, the webcrawler was used for the sampling process because of its transparency in relation to the criteria for why a website is considered intensely connected and highly visible. A webcrawler is strictly based on the number of incoming and outgoing links. The rankings and search engine results that were used to identify the starting points for the crawler, on the other hand, in most cases did not reveal on what grounds websites were ordered. The results of the webcrawler demonstrated that different kinds of websites are central for people’s communication about political content on the internet. Commenting spaces were mostly situated within websites of news media, political blogs or within social networking sites. Next to the graphic display of the network of websites (cf. Figures 5.1 to 5.5), the webcrawler also produces a list of websites ranked by their number of incoming links. From this list, the news media and blogs were extracted separately. In order to verify the initial assumption that intensely networked websites would offer active commenting spaces, these websites were reconsidered. Their focus on general politics (and not on specific policies) was reconfirmed, and it was checked whether they offered a commenting section and if it was used actively. In a final selection step, for each country the quantitatively most interlinked news media website and political blog were chosen from this list. Furthermore, Facebook was chosen as the quantitatively most interlinked social networking site. However, the webcrawler does not display which specific pages are important within a social networking site. Because the main interest in including Facebook was to cover different types of interfaces, for pragmatic reasons the news media’s Facebook pages were selected for the sample. In order to collect sufficient material, a second Facebook page for every country was chosen. However, even though the political blogs in this sample in most cases used a separate Facebook page, there was hardly any commenting activity on them. Accordingly, they were not included in the sample, and the Facebook page of the second most interlinked news media website was included instead.
Sampling
73
Figure 5.1: Hyperlink networks of political websites from Austria
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Research design and method
Figure 5.2: Hyperlink networks of political websites from France
Sampling
75
Figure 5.3: Hyperlink networks of political websites from Germany
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Research design and method
Figure 5.4: Hyperlink networks of political websites from Great Britain
Sampling
77
Figure 5.5: Hyperlink networks of political websites from Europe
78
Research design and method
Overall, this study relies on a sample of 20 comment forums (cf. Table 5.1): one comment forum from a major news media website, one comment forum from a political blog hosted by a professional, semi-professional or amateur blogger as well as two major news media’s Facebook pages with their respective commenting interface. As news media websites Der Standard (Austria), Libération (France), Spiegel Online (Germany), The Guardian (GB) and Financial Times (Europe) were chosen. The political blogs in this sample are FS Misik (Austria), Sarkofrance later renamed Chroniques de Juan (France), Spiegelfechter (Germany), Guido Fawkes (GB) as well as the blog Charlemagne, which is part of the online version of The Economist (Europe). The interface analysis can, therefore, compare commenting interfaces from different settings. Table 5.1: Sample of comment forums based on hyperlink network analysis Country
Blog
News media
Austria
FS Misik
Der Standard
Facebook Kurier Der Standard
Sarkofrance
France
Libération
Le Monde Libération
Germany
Spiegelfechter
Spiegel Online
Bild Spiegel
Great ain EU
Brit-
Guido Fawkes
The Guardian
BBC The Guardian
Charlemagne
Financial Times
Financial Times The Economist
The next steps in the sampling procedure concerned selecting a time frame for the collection of material as well as choosing the articles, blog posts and Facebook posts that people commente d on. The summit of the European Council in June 2012 was chosen for the time of sampling, because it ensured that journalists and bloggers would be covering the euro crisis during that time. The summit was already portrayed beforehand as a ‘crisis summit’ that would likely result in new developments in the crisis context. Thus, not only did the summit ensure sufficient media attention, but it was also identified as a threshold moment. From 25 June until 2 July 2012, the week of the summit, all articles and blog posts
Sampling
79
were selected from the home page of the websites in the sample that contained the search string ‘EU’, ‘Euro’ or any form of the word ‘Europe’ in the respective country’s language. These articles, blog or Facebook posts represent primary inputs in this study, as they are the first point of reference for the online comments, which are then described as secondary inputs. Starting from these primary inputs all comments that people published in the three following days were selected. In order to reduce the volume of comments for the qualitative analysis, another step in the sampling procedure had to be undertaken. From all comment threads collected in this way, a most diverse sample was created. In order to include the maximum range of different threads, a matrix was set up which took into consideration the variety of the primary input’s topic (Europe and domestic politics, supranational level, European foreign and security policy, USA and Europe), the type of primary input (editorial, news item, commentary, interview), the length of the comment thread (from a couple to several hundred comments) and the date of publication within the week of sampling. Through this process 89 comment threads with 5412 comments in total were selected and analysed in the interaction analysis (cf. Appendix C).
5.3
Interface Analysis
As discussed previously, a dialectical approach analyses the meanings that producers of media technologies and the people appropriating these media technologies establish in their respective practices of production or consumption. For an analysis of digital spaces of civic communication in general and for online commenting specifically this requires to empirically grasp on the production side the meanings that providers associate with their commenting interfaces. Studies on the socio-technical interrelation within contemporary digital media often analyse in what ways producers articulate ideas of an implied user-audience in their production processes (Mollen et al. 2016: 367). They investigate how producers inscribe specific notions of ideal audiences and practices within the technological design of their software interface (cf. Alby and Zucchermaglio 2007; Gerlitz and Helmond 2013; Graham and Whalen 2008). This observation is in line with the theoretical contextualization of a dialectical approach as presented in this
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Research design and method
study. The meanings that become inscribed into the commenting interfaces are expressed in the inherent potentials of the comment technology (domestication), they become visible when restraining and enabling specific practices (affordances) and they make specific forms of agency durable (ANT). The meanings that providers associate with their interfaces consequently become inscribed in the production process. That is why commenting interfaces can be used as the object of analysis for an investigation into what meanings providers imply within the production of their software interfaces. In short, the question that needs answering aims at revealing the forms of communication that providers wish and anticipate that people will engage in as well as the interface functions meant to support these anticipations. Addressing the materiality of software-based digital media is a fairly new interest in media and communication research and cannot draw on wellestablished methods. Thus, I propose an interface analysis to analyse the meanings that providers associate with their commenting interfaces. It aims at collecting, describing and categorizing all information on an interface in order to draw conclusions about the implied user and the forms of communication that providers intend and anticipate will occur. One underlying assumption of this method is that individual providers meaningfully produce their commenting interfaces. Before studying the meanings that providers associate with their commenting interfaces, it is necessary to reflect on who the producers and providers of these commenting interfaces are. An interface analysis is based on the assumption that the interface reflects the interests that providers pursue with their commenting sections. Only when they can shape and influence the production process is it possible to draw such conclusions. This is usually the case when a website offering a comment forum uses an in-house commenting system. In that case providers have more opportunities to customize software interfaces according to their own interests. However, many news media websites and especially blogs no longer invest in their own commenting system, but instead rely on third-party solutions (Martin 2015). But even when the production of commenting software is externalized, news organisations as the customers purchasing commenting software are still involved in the production process. This is notwithstanding the observation that ready-made platforms or social plug-ins themselves are becoming important and powerful digital intermediaries, which stand in asymmetric relations with news media or-
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ganisations (Nielsen and Ganter 2017: 13) and can to a certain extent determine the form of commenting software. A number of methods have emerged in recent years focusing on interfaces, platforms or more generally software in order to make digital media artefacts accessible to an empirical description. They usually aim to analyse the intentions of producers when designing an interface or an app or to draw conclusions about how people will use an interface or app. In a study on news app design Mike Ananny and Kate Crawford, for instance, started their interviews with a tour of the interface asking developers about ‘why some design decisions were made over others’ (Ananny and Crawford 2015: 5). Amanda Friz and Robert Gehl focused on an analysis of the sign-up pages of social networking sites, because ‘[t]he sign-up interface is a moment in which the site engineers inscribe their imagination of who the user is through these design conventions and structures’ (Friz and Gehl 2016: 690). Focusing more on how people make use of apps, Ben Light, Jean Burgess and Stefanie Duguay propose a walkthrough method in order to analyse how people are guided through the interfaces of an app in what would be their normal app use (Light et al. 2016). Lastly, the idea behind reverse engineering demonstrates that researchers not only want to dismantle and identify the single components that make up existing software. Reverse engineering is equally a way to identify the abstract ideas and purposes specific software is intended to achieve as well as to reveal the imagined uses that producers anticipated (Gehl 2017: 5). At this point these approaches represent individual research endeavours rather than an encompassing methodological framework to study the software of digital media. Nevertheless, the interface analysis proposed in this study takes elements from the above-mentioned approaches. It equally tries to grasp the entire set-up of an interface, as Ananny and Crawford as well as Light et al. do with their walkthrough method. However, it does not take either producers’ statements about the interface or people’s ways of moving through the interface into account, partly because it covers the agency aspect through a different methodological approach and partly because the analysis of commenting interfaces is not as complex as the analysis of a complete app. The interface analysis furthermore relies on policy documents that providers make available through their interfaces as equally the analysis of sign-up interfaces by Friz and Gehl did. In other words, the proposed method continues and extends the above-mentioned approaches,
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Research design and method
but sets a distinct focus in order to answer what meanings providers articulate for online commenting through their interface inscriptions. The material used for the interface analysis consists of the online versions of the commenting interfaces, screenshots from these interfaces as well as a collection of texts in which providers make statements about their commenting sections, usually in the form of policy guidelines or terms of use. The process of qualitatively analysing the commenting interfaces consequently also proceeds on three levels. The first step in the analysis describes the interfaces with regard to how people can move and navigate in the commenting sections. This description is based on a report of every step that someone must undertake in a commenting interface in order to write and publish a comment. Furthermore, it includes descriptions of any additional opportunity that people can make use of in relation to online commenting in the interfaces under analysis. In that regard, it is similar to a walkthrough method. These reports, for example, explain the registration process before being able to comment, contain information about the maximum length of a comment, describe what functions logged in users are able to make use of, etc. Such information is not necessarily directly perceivable on an interface, but becomes apparent when moving through the interface as a regular commenter. The reports that were produced in this way are used as contextual information for the two subsequent steps in the coding process. In the second step of the analysis and based on the screenshots from the commenting interfaces an open coding of all interface functions was conducted with atlas.ti as the software for qualitative analysis (cf. Figure 5.6 for an exemplification of the coding procedure, rebuilt from atlas.ti). Any option for navigation, any information relating to the commenting section or any button to click on the interface was inductively coded with a descriptive label as well as a short explanation of what purpose this specific function would be serving or what information it contains. Overall, 107 codes were created that way (cf. Appendix A for a complete list). Many commenting interfaces, for instance, contain response buttons, which differ in their specifics. On some interfaces a response button allows someone to directly respond to another person’s comment, while in another interface, it allows someone to respond and cite a previous comment at the same time. Alternatively, it might also be used to respond to the primary input. In the initial coding process each specific function was differentiated in order to gain an overview of the complete range of interface functions.
Interface Analysis
Figure 5.6: Example open coding of interface functions in the Spiegel Online commenting interface
83
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Research design and method
A similar open coding process was carried out on the level of the collected texts from the commenting interfaces in which providers make statements about their commenting sections (cf. Table 5.2). Table 5.2: Sample of documents for interface analysis Austria FS Misik
Der Standard
Facebook Kurier
•
• • •
Facebook Der Standard
/
/
Facebook Le Monde
Facebook Libération
/
/
Community guidelines Moderation guidelines Community FAQs
• •
Community guidelines Moderation guidelines Community FAQs
France Sarkofrance
Libération
•
•
Commenting guidelines
Commenting information (mail)
Germany Spiegelfechter
Spiegel Online
Facebook Bild
Facebook Spiegel
•
•
/
/
Moderation statement
•
Commenting guidelines Terms of use
Great Britain Guido Fawkes
The Guardian
Facebook BBC
/
• •
Facebook The Guardian
/
/
Facebook Financial Times
Facebook The Economist
/
/
•
Terms of use Community guidelines Community FAQs
Europe Charlemagne •
Terms of use
Financial Times • •
Commenting guidelines Terms of use
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Usually the commenting interfaces offered links to several such texts, usually terms of use, commenting guidelines or policies, statements about netiquette, etc. However, not every forum in this sample contained such information. Some providers, like the German blog Spiegelfechter, explicitly state that they do not provide guidelines on how people should be commenting. They also do not moderate people’s comments, because they consider moderation as imposing restrictions on people’s freedom of speech. In most cases, the news media in this sample provided in part very detailed accounts of how they hope people will use the comment section. But even they did not provide commenting guidelines on their respective Facebook pages, hence no documents relating to the comment sections on Facebook were included in this part of the analysis. Overall 17 documents were identified on the commenting interfaces in this sample. In these documents providers usually spell out their specific anticipations regarding people’s commenting practices and in some cases reveal their motives with regard to specific interface functions. Overall 39 codes were identified that could be categorized into four groups. Providers articulated wanted and unwanted commenting practices, they explicated a commenting purpose on their interface, they covered themselves with regard to legal liabilities and they articulated provider principles that they followed with regard to their commenting sections (cf. Appendix B for a complete list). After this initial coding process the open codes of the interface screenshots as well as of the provider documents were grouped into broader categories of interface functions and provider anticipations according to similarity. The initial open codes were grouped and compared in order to identify broader structures beyond the specific occurrence that were the basis for analysis in the open coding process. The aim was to identify categories that would be classifying repeated occurrences in the material (Kelle and Kluge 2010: 60). Some codes were also excluded from the analysis. These excluded codes related to possibilities for people to navigate through the website hosting the comment section, e.g. navigating via hyperlinks through different thematic sections of a news media website. At this stage, they were not considered relevant for this analysis because they would not provide insights on the forms of civic online communication that providers wanted to establish in their interfaces. After assembling all open codes 41 categories remained, which were thematically grouped with regard to whether they related to commenting, profiles, interaction or moderation (cf. Table 5.3).
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As the analysis in chapter 6 will demonstrate each interface was checked for these 41 categories in order to draw conclusions on the specific meanings that providers implement through their interface inscriptions. Table 5.3: Categories of interface analysis Commenting
Profiles
Interaction
Moderation
Non-repetitive
User authenticity
Adressing/Citing
Closing comments
Non-commercial
Block users
Following users
Pre-moderation (alg.)
Language guidelines
Group users
Feedback buttons
Pre-moderation (man.)
No flooding
No alienation
Private messaging
Post-moderation
Civil tone
Profile (all comments)
Sharing
Terminating access
On-topic comments
Registration
Archiving comments
Transparency
Legible comments
Notifications
Promoting comments
Constructive tone
Comment filter
Legal prosecution
Word limitation
Donations
Indemnification
Factuality
User articles
Flagging
Respectfulness Copyright No malware Publication rights No data infringement
5.4
Interaction Analysis
The second level of research in a dialectical approach addresses the agency side of online commenting. On the basis of people’s comments on the euro crisis that were sampled as described above, a qualitative interaction analysis was carried out in order to identify and describe the commenting practices and interaction roles in people’s online commenting. An interaction analysis is based on the principles of conversation analysis (Sacks et al. 1974) as well as genre analysis
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as developed in German sociolinguistic approaches (Knoblauch and Günthner 1995; Knoblauch and Luckmann 2002; Luckmann 1986). Originally these approaches were applied to face-to-face conversations or synchronous mediated conversation as in telephone calls. An analysis of online commenting is thus compatible with these approaches, as they require exact transcriptions of people’s conversations and interactions. As a form of written communication, people’s online comments by definition appear in textual form and can be easily made accessible for the analysis of socially established and formalised patterns of interactions (Knoblauch and Günthner 1995: 5). But although conversation analyses are regularly conducted to study people’s online interactions (Antaki et al. 2006; Gibson 2009; Steensen 2014; Stommel and Meijman 2011), this analysis reflects on the specifics of online commenting as compared to synchronous forms of conversation by not framing its methodological proceeding as a conversation or genre analysis. Instead, I shall develop an interaction analysis that is closely based on the principles of conversation and genre analysis. The proposed interaction analysis shares with conversation and genre analysis its theoretical grounding in ethnomethodology. Harold Garfinkel was concerned with the question of what everyday methods people use to constitute social order (Garfinkel 1967). Individuals implicitly recognize the underlying principles of this order and participate in recreating it by establishing practices through routinized occurrences (Reckwitz 2002: 250). That is why an interaction analysis aims at identifying people’s commenting practices in order to determine what Erving Goffman called an interaction order (Goffman 1983). The basic assumption here is that interactions do not take place randomly, but in fact are based on a specific order, even though this order might not always be obvious to the participants in an interaction. Instead, they adhere to the interaction order intuitively. Taking a communicative genre (Luckmann 1986) like introductions (introducing a person to a group of unknown people) as an example, it becomes obvious that certain communicative practices like words of welcome as well as self-presentation etc. and a specific succession of these practices are typical for this sort of interaction. Other communicative practices would be considered inappropriate. The same principle is applied for the interaction analysis of people’s online commenting. But as already mentioned, for the case of online commenting a number of specificities make it necessary to speak of an interaction analysis instead of a
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conversation or genre analysis. Compared with face-to-face encounters but also compared with mediated conversations such as telephone calls, online commenting differs fundamentally from direct communicative encounters. First, online commenting can be considered an asynchronous form of communication. Whether communication occurs in synchronous or asynchronous forms makes a fundamental difference for the course of an interaction. The asynchronous character of online commenting requires people to make an appearance and to enter an interaction in completely different ways than in face-to-face situations. Commenters rely on their personal profile and on their commenting practices in order to make an appearance, to address potential interaction partners and to be addressed by others. That is why, for instance, opening, entering as well as ending an interaction works very differently than in direct conversational encounters. Second, people’s commenting practices do not exclusively rely on written text. Instead, they incorporate the technological functions on the commenting interfaces. In that sense one can, for example, consider people’s practices of referring to other websites by implementing hyperlinks as a typical communicative practice in online settings (Highfield et al. 2011: 348). The same can potentially be assumed for other practices and interface functions, such as rating practices that are carried out on the basis of like or dislike buttons. That is why it seems more appropriate to speak of an interaction analysis than a conversation or genre analysis. Conversation and genre analysis do not provide a concrete methodological toolset. Instead, the methodological procedure depends on the phenomenon and material that lies at the centre of each analysis (Bergmann 1980: 16). However one central principle, which this interaction analysis also builds on, sees the researcher trying to find regularly occurring patterns in the material and to identify structure in the analysed interactions (Bergmann 1980: 21). This principle applies not only for identifying commenting practices in this analysis, but also for recognizing typical interaction roles that people assume in their comment interactions. The first analytical step in the interaction analysis was concerned with identifying the typical commenting practices that people engaged in when commenting on the euro crisis. As explicated above, on the basis of the principle of theoretical sampling (Glaser and Strauss 1980), a sample with very diverse commenting threads was assembled based on the assumption that such a diverse sample
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would cover a broad range of commenting practices (cf. Appendix C for an overview of the sample of commenting threads). The analysis started by inductively searching for regularly occurring patterns in people’s comments, which was done by selecting and printing a subsample of approximately 25 diverse commenting threads. By selecting a subsample, this interaction analysis followed the proposition made for conversation and genre analysis to conduct the analysis in three steps. First, individual cases are analysed, and then a hypothesis about the structure of people’s interactions is formed. Third, the corpus is enlarged to see whether the hypothesis also applies to other conversations. Eventually, the aim is to identify structural patterns across many individual texts that are insensitive to the contexts of their occurrences (Bergmann 1987: 56). The initial steps of the coding process were conducted on paper. The analysis of the 25 commenting threads, then, allowed for a staged approach toward the typical underlying practices in people’s online commenting on the euro crisis. First, it became apparent in the analysis that there were different types of interactions that could be distinguished based on their orientation towards the issue under discussion or towards other commenters as interaction partners. By advancing the analysis further each type of interaction could eventually be described through a number of commenting practices that could clearly be distinguished from each other. Although not every identified commenting practice could be found in every commenting thread, they were still applicable across the 25 commenting threads in the subsample. At this point, the analysis was broadened to cover the complete sample, and was no longer conducted on paper, but continued with help of the atlas.ti software for qualitative analysis. Eventually, the analysis revealed 21 commenting practices that could be grouped into seven types of comment interactions. The analysis of interaction roles in people’s commenting equally aims at identifying patterns in people’s commenting – albeit this time not solely with regard to people’s commenting practices. Instead, this part of the analysis was concerned with recognizing patterns in people’s evolving interactions across multiple comments. The individual commenting practices constitute one structural element therein. But the analysis also detected typical phases and courses in people’s comment interactions. The analysis of the interaction roles was likewise conducted by following the three analytical steps proposed by conversation and genre analysis. Based on the subsample, the typical commenting practices, the
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typical phases of an interaction as well as the typical courses an interaction took were initially identified as the defining elements that in their typical occurrences mark people’s evolving interactions. Their specific constellation and combination, then, makes it possible to assess the distinct interaction roles that people assume in their comment interactions. These interaction roles describe how people engaged with the euro crisis as the issue under discussion in this analysis. While the analysis into people’s individual commenting practices allows conclusions to be drawn on the digital spaces of civic communication that become constituted in people’s online commenting, the analysis of interaction roles stresses even more how people’s comment interactions are relevant as a form of civic online communication. Among other things, this was assessed based on a comparison with the anticipations that providers inscribed into their commenting interfaces as identified in the interface analysis. As explained in the theoretical part of this book, a consideration of the socio-technical constitution of online commenting is essential for an assessment of the digital spaces of civic communication in contemporary democracies.
6
Meaning through the interface: Setting a frame for online commenting
By using a dialectical approach in the analysis of online commenting, I follow the rising interest in the materiality of digital media technologies (cf. chapter 3). The underlying assumption is that technologies matter for people’s sense-making and for the media-related practices they can engage in. But discussions on the formative potential of media technologies often do not move beyond postulating that technology is relevant. The aim of this interface analysis is to go beyond stating that commenting interfaces matter to people’s commenting practices by investigating the meanings that providers inscribe into their interfaces. Hence the analysis addresses to what extent and in what ways the interfaces of online commenting become relevant for people’s commenting practices. By doing so, I situate my study within a materialist phenomenology as proposed by Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp. They focus on the increasing entanglement of the social with the formative potential of media technologies: ‘It means understanding how the social is constructed in an age of deep mediatization when the very elements and building-blocks from which a sense of the social is constructed become themselves based in technologically based processes of mediation. As a result, the ways in which we make sense of the world phenomenologically become necessarily entangled with the constraints, affordances, and power-relations that are features of media as infrastructures for communication.’ (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 7) For the field of civic online communication this means addressing how far media technologies become entangled with the ways in which people can act as citizens with and through media. In that regard, online commenting constitutes only one possible way amongst many others through which people can engage in civic communication online. By concentrating on the phenomenon of online com© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 A. Mollen, Digital Spaces of Civic Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0_6
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menting, the analysis provides insights into how the providers of commenting interfaces are setting a frame for people’s commenting practices through the technology they produce. With reference to de Certeau’s distinction between places and spaces (de Certeau 1984: 117), the interface analysis addresses how providers strategically produce commenting interfaces with specific intentions and anticipations concerning people’s practices in mind. Making interfaces the object of research is thus in accordance with approaches that consider graphical user interfaces (GUIs) not as seamless and transparent points of contact between a computer and a user (cf. chapter 4.2), but as central to people’s practices. The interface analysis demonstrates in this context that providers inscribe specific meaning into their interfaces. Accordingly, it becomes possible to differentiate distinct types of interfaces: informative, discursive, confined or volatile. Depending on the type of interface, providers articulate particular anticipations for and interests concerning people’s commenting practices, while recognizing that people’s actual use may deviate from these ideals. Furthermore, the analysis identifies general dimensions of interface inscriptions through which providers establish online commenting in a specific form beyond the individual commenting interface. These dimensions refer to deliberative norms, community discourse, loyalty and distribution as well as legal and ethical liabilities. Ultimately, the analysis shows beyond the case of online commenting that providers inscribe their interests and anticipations into the interfaces through restrictions, options or guidelines. While the limitations of implementing provider interests in a purely top-down manner has already been hinted at, the final part of the analysis demonstrates that providers inscribe meaning into an interface through a continuum of control. Interface inscriptions can be rigidly controlling, but more often leave people room for alternative appropriations. Overall the analysis demonstrates that the formative potential of digital media interfaces is more nuanced and complex than one-sided discussions about powerful platforms imply.
6.1
Types of interface inscriptions
The commenting interfaces in this analysis can be distinguished based on the different interface functions through which people can engage with an interface, all articulations of anticipated practices and all actions taken by providers with
Types of interface inscriptions
93
regard to people’s commenting (cf. Table 6.1 for a complete overview and comparison). Providers, then, produce interfaces that embody specific meanings and ideas about online commenting by articulating concrete anticipations concerning people’s commenting practices and by implementing interface functions to substantiate these anticipations. They quite explicitly state that they want comments to be informative, factual, concise, respectful, civil in tone, legible as well as ontopic. What they do not want are clearly advertorial comments, comments violating copyright, organised campaigns with huge numbers of comments (flooding) or comments linking to malware. Providers will take action against such commenting practices through their moderation activities, which can either consist of algorithmic or manual moderation. They reserve the right to close the comment sections for specific articles, to terminate an account in the event of severe violations of commenting rules and even to make authorities aware of illegal behaviour within comment sections in order to enable criminal prosecution. In relation to people’s profiles, providers in many cases ensure that people have to register in order to be held accountable for their actions, they urge them not to prevent others from participating and they enable people to ignore other commenters in cases of harassment. Despite anticipating conflict, they include many functions through which people can interact with each other, e.g. through feedback buttons, referencing and citing options, private messaging, by notifying commenters when they receive a response to their comment, etc. Depending on their specific composition, the interfaces in this sample can then be categorized into informative, discursive, confined or volatile interfaces (cf. Table 6.2). These categories indicate the specific meanings that providers associate with online commenting. Informative interfaces, to which I have assigned Spiegel Online and Financial Times, most rigidly implement journalistic norms for people’s commenting. Discursive interfaces, including Libération, Der Standard, The Guardian and Charlemagne, more explicitly focus on establishing a community with strong interactions between commenters. Confined interfaces are mostly limited to political blogs such as Spiegelfechter, Sarkofrance, Zur Politik and Guido Fawkes. They implement an idea of commenting as a discussion between a small but stable group of active participants. Volatile interfaces describe the news media Facebook pages in this sample. They are very limited in their functions and mostly implement commenting as a brief feedback outlet for their readers.
Addressing Following users Feedback buttons
Interaction
User authenticity Block users Group users No alienation Profile (all comments) Registration
Profiles
Non-repetitive Non-advertorial Language guidelines No flooding Civil tone On-topic Legible Constructive Word limitation Factuality Respectfulness Copyright No malware Publication rights No data infringement
Commenting
✓ ✓ ✓
✓ ✓ ✓
✓ ✓
✓ ✓
✓
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
X ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X X X
X ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X X X
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
✓ ✓
✓ ✓
✓ ✓ ✓
✓ ✓
Germany
✓ X X
✓ ✓
X X2 X X X
X X X X
X
X ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X ✓ X X X
✓ ✓
Spiegel Online
X X X X
X
X ✓ ✓ ✓ X
X X ✓ X X X X X X X X X
X X
Sarkofrance
X ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X ✓ ✓ X X
X ✓
France Libération1
FS Misik
Austria
Der Standard
✓ X X
✓ X2
X X X X
✓
X X X X X X X X X ✓ ✓ ✓
X X
Spiegelfechter
UK
✓ X ✓
✓ ✓
✓ X X ✓
X
X ✓ ✓ ✓ X ✓ ✓ X ✓ X X ✓
X ✓
The Guardian
✓ X X
X X
X X X X
X
X X X ✓ X X X X X X X X
X X
Guido Fawkes
Europe
X X ✓
X ✓
✓ X X X
✓
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
✓ ✓
Charlemagne
X X ✓
✓ ✓
✓ X X ✓
✓
✓ ✓ ✓ X X X ✓ X X ✓ ✓ ✓
✓ ✓
FT
94 Meaning through the interface
Table 6.1: Overview interface inscriptions
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
✓
✓ ✓
✓ ✓
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
X ✓ X ✓ ✓ X ✓
✓
X ✓ X ✓ ✓ X ✓
✓ X ✓ X
X ✓ X X X X X X
X3 X4 ✓ ✓ X ✓ X ✓
X ✓ X ✓
X
X
X
X
X ✓ X X X X X
X
X X X X X X X
X
✓ ✓ X ✓ X X X
X ✓ ✓ ✓
✓ X
✓ X
✓
✓
X ✓ X ✓ X ✓ X
X X ✓ ✓
✓ ✓
X ✓
X
✓
X ✓ ✓ X ✓ X X
✓ X X X
X X
X ✓
X
X
X X X ✓ X X X
✓ X ✓ ✓
✓ ✓
X ✓
✓
X
X ✓ X ✓ X X X
Note 1: Functions with an ‘X’ were not specifically mentioned or not directly visible on the interface. It therefore cannot be guaranteed that all such functions are in fact not present. For instance, many providers mentioned algorithmic pre-moderation, but it could be the case that others used algorithms without mentioning it. In that case it would not have been coded in this list. 1 The Libération forum was coded in its early 2012 version (a redesign occurred during the year). 2 Optional 3 Since December 2013 4 Until December 2013
Closing comments Pre-moderation (algorithm) Pre-moderation (manual) Post-moderation Terminating access Transparency Promoting comments Legal prosecution Indemnification Flagging
Moderation
Private messaging Sharing Archiving Notifications Comment filter Donations User articles
X X ✓ ✓
X X
X ✓
X
X
X ✓ X X X X X
Types of interface inscriptions 95
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Meaning through the interface
Table 6. 2: Types of Interfaces
Informative Interfaces
Discursive Interfaces
Confined Interfaces
Volatile Interfaces
Financial Times, Spiegel Online
Charlemagne, Libération, Guardian, Der Standard
G. Fawkes, Sarkofrance, Spiegelfechter, Zur Politik
News media Facebook accounts
Commenting as extension to journalism
Commenting as interactive community
Commenting as debate among peers
Commenting as fleeting engagement
• provide new information
• discuss interactively
• provide short feedback
• discuss alternative views
• establish and uphold relations
• discuss interactively and continuously
• contribute new perspectives
• create identity
• be factual and comprehensible
• be inclusive and responsive
• establish an identity • be active and responsive
• discuss briefly • engage in situational encounters • be brief and outspoken
This overview does not imply that one type of interface cannot display characteristics of a different type. It merely expresses on which specific aspects providers choose to focus. But the interface inscriptions demonstrate that providers articulate precise anticipations for people’s commenting practices through the technological design of their interfaces. Nevertheless, they also acknowledge that people’s commenting practices are decisive for establishing online commenting in a specific form on their website. In severe cases, providers can only control what happens within their interfaces by discontinuing an individual’s access to the commenting functions. In other words, providers take into account the sociotechnical constitution of online commenting and acknowledge the limits of the formative potential of their interfaces.
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97
6.1.1 Informative Interfaces With informative interfaces providers primarily focus on journalism-inspired ideals of online commenting. Their interface inscriptions articulate that people should engage in commenting practices that are first and foremost concerned with information in relation to the article and the topic under discussion. Commenters are encouraged to discuss the article by providing new information, by discussing the topic at hand from various perspectives and by contributing new points of view. Providers expect commenters to be factual and comprehensible. Discussions are supposed to move forward and not repeat aspects that have already been mentioned. Comments are meant to be concise, short, factual and understandable, which is encouraged by guidelines on the interface and by word restrictions in the comment entry fields. This focus on providing new information is at the expense of opportunities through which people can provide feedback to each other. Building up a commenting identity and community is generally not considered as important as providing new information and perspectives. Consequently, informative interfaces lack functions such as rating systems or other feedback options, detailed personal profile pages, recommendation or private messaging systems. Two commenting interfaces in this sample can be described as informative interfaces: Spiegel Online and the Financial Times. Spiegel Online exemplifies how providers urge commenters to focus on providing new information and less on engaging and interacting with others. Its guidelines and terms of use state repeatedly that people’s comments should focus on the article and topic under discussion. On the article page itself the comment section is only marginally displayed, as is reflected in the interface functions. There are many options for saving, archiving, sending, sharing and liking the article. The actual comment forum is, however, located on a separate page. On the article page there is only a preview of the first five comments. Furthermore, there are no options for customizing one’s commenting settings, or for filtering or ordering the strictly chronologically listed comment thread. Users can respond to, cite and flag other comments, but are not given any other options to interact. Users do have personal profile pages, but they only display the date of registration and a repository of all comments by the profile owner. Spiegel Online’s interface functions thus concentrate on the process of writing comments with a
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maximum length of 3200 characters. But within this function providers clearly set out specific expectations for their commenters:
Figure 6.1: Screenshot from the Spiegel Online website's terms of use (http://www.spiegel.de/extra/spon-forum-so-wollen-wir-debattieren-a-1032920.html) ‘We want to have an open, friendly and respectful climate of discussion – please make sure that you maintain a fair and objective tone in your debates and that contributions are always closely connected to the topic of discussion. Our forums are moderated – we ask for your understanding that we may delete certain comments or not allow them to appear on the website • if they contain content of an advertising character, if they are liable to prosecution or if they are unacceptable in any other way and • if they have nothing to do with the topic of discussion, if they are simple comments of approval or if they merely repeat already mentioned arguments.’ (Translation by the author)
Their terms of use thus state that people are to discuss the topic constructively and in a civil manner, which they enforce through moderation. Spiegel Online focuses more on discussion and less on the community aspect of online commenting. The Financial Times equally concentrates more on information than on community exchange and interaction between commenters. Providers explain in detail that people should be on-topic and always comment in a factual, concise, civil and constructive tone. The Financial Times does not encourage identity management and community building within the comment section of its website: there are hardly any interface inscriptions that allow commenters to create profiles or interact with each other. The interface does not even provide a system through which people can address each other or provide feedback, as most other interfaces do. Access to the Financial Times is restricted to paying subscribers, hence potential commenters will always have a personal profile registered with the website. Yet there are no profile pages, and when posting comments people
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99
need not choose a user name, but can post anonymously. Overall, the Financial Times displays even fewer opportunities for interaction than Spiegel Online.
6.1.2 Discursive Interfaces The second type of interface, which is quite common in this sample, can be described as discursive. As with informative interfaces providers encourage commenters to discuss articles and the topic at hand constructively and in a civil manner. However, alongside the focus on information, the providers of discursive interfaces give equal attention to the so-called commenting community. They encourage people to engage in commenting practices through which they establish and maintain relations with each other. Providers therefore postulate within their interfaces an idea of online commenting based on people’s involvement and relation-building. They formulate anticipations concerning people’s commenting practices that focus on enabling and promoting interaction as well as identity management. In their terms of use providers encourage commenters to address and engage with each other. These encouragements are substantiated by interface functions allowing commenters to directly respond to each other as well as reference and quote other comments. They can also give feedback through up or down votes, likes or recommendation buttons. While informative interfaces are mostly concerned with commenters providing new information, discursive interfaces encourage people’s mutual involvement with the issue under discussion by enabling and encouraging feedback and a continuous exchange of opinions, points of view and arguments. The Guardian, for example, explicitly hopes for collaborative responses to their articles:
Figure 6.2: Screenshot from The Guardian Community FAQs (https://www.theguardian.com/community-faqs)
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Meaning through the interface
Most providers in this sample seem to agree that in order to achieve a flow of conversation and continuous engagement between commenters, it is necessary to provide a space where people feel safe. In their statements, many therefore highlight the importance of moderation policies for enabling and inviting dialogue and discussion (Der Standard, The Guardian, Libération). Furthermore, it is considered important that other commenters are not inhibited or restricted from posting comments (Financial Times, Charlemagne). Within discursive interfaces it is also often emphasised that a thriving community is a precondition for valuable and engaging discussions. Discursive interfaces are also characterised by functions through which people can create and manage a commenting identity, e.g. through personal profile pages, direct messaging applications or befriending as well as following options. In this sample four interfaces can be identified as discursive: Libération, Der Standard, The Guardian and Charlemagne. The European blog Charlemagne as the first example of a discursive interface is part of the online presence of the weekly magazine The Economist.1 Its interface displays the basic functions of most discursive interfaces in this sample: profile pages with a repository of all comments written, referencing and quoting options, feedback buttons as well as comment navigation that lists comments as reply-and-answer threads. Within their terms of use the Charlemagne providers articulate explicitly that they see their commenting section as a space for interaction. Everyone is thus encouraged to interact by referring to other commenters, by responding to previous arguments and by providing feedback to others. The French online newspaper Libération is another example of a discursive interface with more encompassing interface functions allowing for an interactive exchange between commenters, at least in its version between 2012 and early 2014.2 The providers explicitly state that their website offers a forum for communitarian exchange. In addition to articulating specific commenting practices that people should engage in and implementing technical functions like extended referencing or private messaging systems to foster exchange and interaction, the providers create a sense of community by referring to all people using their site
1 2
In 2012 and 2013 the blog was still very active with several new posts a week, but since 2014 activity seems to have been suspended. After 2014 the website changed quite fundamentally.
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as libénautes – a neologism which refers to the French word ‘internautes’ which simply signifies ‘internet user’:
Figure 6.3: Screenshot from Libération website’s ethic charter http://www.liberation.fr/charte/ ‘Libé is a communal space that permits its registered and subscribing members to create personal online profiles, to post comments on www.liberation.fr and to exchange ideas with other libénautes.’ (Translation by author)
Furthermore, Libération providers pay particular attention to the profile pages of their commenters. They implement expansive functions on the interface through which people can manage their personal profiles. These resemble profiles within social networking sites and allow people to add self-descriptive texts and characterisations, to befriend and unfriend each other, to follow each other and to send each other private messages. In short, the Libération providers enable commenters to connect and exchange with each other through manifold interface functions. As part of a redesign of the Libération website and especially its commenting section, the providers even stated explicitly that the moderation team would be strengthened in order to support the community. The Austrian Der Standard takes a similar interest in its community and the exchange between commenters, but its providers implement a number of different interface functions. For example, it is one of the few interfaces in this sample which includes feedback options for negative as well as positive evaluations. However, its functionalities concerning people’s interaction go much further. Der Standard offers possibilities for commenters to follow each other and consequently to be regularly informed about other people’s commenting activities. These selected individuals become a person’s co-poster. Their comments can be accessed directly through a filter and are marked with a blue icon when browsing the commenting pages. The providers of Der Standard furthermore reward active and involved commenters by selecting so-called top postings. These are
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Meaning through the interface
identified by an algorithm, which takes into account the positive and negative feedback commenters receive, their connection within the community, their adherence to community guidelines and the number of published and deleted comments. A similar karma system underpins Der Standard’s pre-moderation algorithm Foromat, which identifies comments that are likely to violate community guidelines. Der Standard thus relies on its community in an attempt to strengthen the quality of discussion. Another example of a discursive interface with a large and active base of commenters can be found within the website of The Guardian. In a similar way as Der Standard, The Guardian also wants all commenters to take responsibility for the quality of their shared and collaborative comment discussions:
Figure 6.4: Screenshot from The Guardian's Community standards and participation guidelines https://www.theguardian.com/community-standards
The Guardian interface contains, like Libération and Der Standard, basic functions through which commenters can follow longer comment conversations between the same group of people. Referencing and quoting options allow people to engage in such flows of conversation. Furthermore, navigation options enable them to view comments as reply-and-answer threads, so that discussions across numerous comments become visible as such. Engagement with other commenters is further promoted by making their commenting history transparent within personal profile pages that other commenters can retrieve. Like Der Standard, The Guardian promotes specific comments that moderators or editors deem especially noteworthy.
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6.1.3 Confined Interfaces Most blogs in this sample can be described as confined interfaces. They distinguish themselves from the previously described interfaces in that they do not articulate any expectations concerning people’s commenting practices and do not have the technical functions described above. The providers of confined interfaces do not spell out any explicit or detailed norms for how they want people to discuss the content they publish and do not request a civil and respectful tone as most other providers in this sample do. They might sporadically and seemingly arbitrarily delete comments – in most cases when harassment and insults cross a usually very high threshold. But they do not articulate or implement a coherent moderation policy. Their interfaces can be described as confined because they rely on a small but stable group of regular commenters, although a commenting community is not promoted through functions on the interface. Instead, interactions within confined interfaces are heavily centred on the well-known profiles of regular commenters, who usually know each other even though there are no detailed personal profiles or commenting histories available through the interface. Social sanctioning of unwanted commenting practices in the group of interactants is thus more likely to occur than top-down restrictions through moderation policies. In this study three interfaces can be described as confined interfaces: Spiegelfechter, Sarkofrance and Guido Fawkes. The blogs in this sample are relatively similar. Most rely on standard blogging and commenting software. In comparison with big news media companies, they do not have the resources to customize their commenting interfaces to their specific needs, which is why the German Spiegelfechter, the French Sarkofrance and the British blog Guido Fawkes display similar interface inscriptions. All state that they will occasionally engage in moderation activities. The French blog Sarkofrance positions the following short passage above the comment entry field underneath each of its blog posts. It is the only form in which anything like an anticipation concerning people’s commenting practices is articulated on the blog. Compared with Spiegelfechter it is even quite detailed and explicit. Spiegelfechter, for example, is much more hesitant about moderation as a form of censorship and rather opts not to moderate people’s comments too
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much. As a consequence, the providers do not explicate any anticipations concerning people’s commenting practices:
Figure 6.5: Screenshot from Sarkofrance website ‘Thank you in advance for your comment. Insults, comments that transport racist messages, are antiSemitic, pornographic, revisionist, sexist or which contain anything that goes against humanist values will not be accepted. Comments MIGHT be subject to moderation and therefore censorship.’ (Translation by author)
With the exception of Sarkofrance, the providers of confined interfaces in this sample also do not make registration mandatory for their commenters. People have the option to register with a personal profile, but they are not obliged to do so – thus again demonstrating the lack of top-down implementation from the provider side. Even though registration is not mandatory, personal profiles are quite important within confined interfaces. Commenters within confined interfaces generally know each other from previous encounters and have often established a relationship. Thus, although a profile is not a prerequisite, they do play an important role. The lack of anticipation concerning people’s commenting practices becomes even more apparent when looking at the British Guido Fawkes blog. Compared with the other two blogs, the Guido Fawkes providers pride themselves in offering an almost completely unrestricted environment for comment and discussion, where anything can be said and where an uncivil and disrespectful tone is considered a valued alternative to politically correct mainstream reporting and commenting. Such an unrestricted environment leaves almost no space for sanctioning unwanted commenting practices – an option most other providers at least reserve for themselves. As a consequence the blog welcomes and encourages extreme opinions and comments. This lack of control and anticipation establishes confined interfaces as a space for commenting on discussions among regular well-known commenters without many rules and restrictions.
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6.1.4 Volatile Interfaces Many news media not only have their own in-house commenting system, but also redirect commenting activities to social networking sites. In this study all of the news media also used Facebook accounts on which people could comment on their articles. These interfaces, which are limited to social networking sites, can be described as confined interfaces. Considering that more and more news media rely on external providers, they are becoming a relatively important space for online commenting. However, these interfaces do not allow providers to inscribe detailed social meanings within their interfaces. The external comment sections within social networking sites can be described as volatile interfaces because they do not display a stable base of commenters, providers do not articulate expectations concerning people’s commenting practices and interface functions are few. They only display very basic commenting functions on their interface: a comment entry field and feedback options in the form of a Like and Share button. As a consequence, interactions between commenters are fleeting and situational. That is why volatile interfaces are in many regards similar to confined interfaces. Neither express their anticipations concerning people’s commenting practices, or express very few. Providers are not able to inform commenters in great detail on their Facebook pages about their rules for a civil, respectful and constructive debate:
Figure 6.6: Screenshot from the Spiegel Online Facebook page from 28 July 2012
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But confined and volatile interfaces differ in one fundamental aspect. Confined interfaces rely on a small and intensely connected group of commenters. Volatile interfaces, on the contrary, have no stable base of regular commenters. There might be people who regularly comment on the Facebook pages of one specific news media, but the overall number of commenters is much larger than within confined interfaces. The detailed profiles that are accessible within social networking sites do not lead to commenters getting to know each other or making strong connections with each other. As a consequence, there are not many opportunities for people to interact and establish relations with each other.
6.2
Dimensions of interface inscriptions
The analysis has thus far demonstrated that the commenting interfaces in this sample can be differentiated from each other based on the specific meanings that their providers inscribe into them. But despite these differences, all commenting interfaces in the sample are underpinned by four common dimensions along which providers orient their interface inscriptions: deliberative norms, community discourse, loyalty and distribution as well as legal and ethical liabilities (cf. Fig. 6.7). These dimensions can be considered the shared fields of activities along which providers inscribe their interests into commenting interfaces. In doing so, they produce general meanings for online commenting and establish them in a specific form beyond the individual interface. Interface inscriptions relating to deliberative norms and community discourse most clearly implement civic ideals of online commenting concerning a shared egalitarian discourse. Loyalty to the news outlet and distribution of its content across multiple platforms demonstrates that providers also pursue economic interests when offering a space for people to comment. Interface inscriptions relating to legal and ethical liabilities highlight the necessity of steering and restricting people’s commenting practices in order to fulfil the previously spelt-out ideals regarding online commenting. These four dimensions should not be understood as clear-cut categories. Most interface inscriptions relate to more than just one dimension. But assigning each interface inscription to one predominant dimension allows for a systematisation of the complex interface inscriptions in this analysis.
Dimensions of interface inscriptions
Figure 6.7: The four dimensions of interface inscriptions
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The four dimensions also demonstrate how providers in fact anticipate that people will engage in different and occasionally even opposing commenting practices compared to what they would like to see. In other words, they reflect on the dialectical development of online commenting between provider anticipations as expressed in the commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices. The fact that providers not only anticipate but even taken people’s divergent commenting practices into account exemplifies how domestication occurs in a circular process (cf. chapter 3.2). The domestication approach promotes the idea of a circular and interdependent relation between the production process of media technologies and people’s practices of appropriation. Providers produce media technologies with specific ideals concerning people’s media practices in mind. But their consumers will engage in practices that were not anticipated and which might be diametric to their intentions. Producers will, then, take these divergent practices into account by adjusting their technology in subsequent production circles. Therefore, although providers implement their anticipations in a largely topdown manner through the interface, they must reconcile their ideal conceptions with people’s divergent commenting practices. Thus, the four dimensions of interface inscriptions not only illustrate the dialectic between provider ideals and people’s practices, but also address how providers negotiate the extent of control that they can achieve through interface inscriptions.
6.2.1 Deliberative Norms With deliberative norms providers establish what kind of place for discussion they want their commenting interface to be. In most comment sections, this is done by pre-emptively explicating what types of practices providers do not wish commenters to engage in. When formulating their desired commenting practices, providers mostly rely on classical civic ideals of debate and deliberation relating to ‘civility, reciprocity, openness, reason-giving, and communication across lines of political difference’ (Freelon 2015: 773). They state, for example, that commenting should serve the purpose of inviting intelligent discussion, of promoting debate among commenters, of giving people an opportunity to provide feedback and possibly contribute new information, opinions and insights on the topic.
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They explicate how the issues under discussion should be commented on as well as how people should act and react towards other commenters. Their methods of inscribing these interests rely predominantly on formulating norms along which people should orient their practices. These are enforced through moderation, and repeated violations of these norms can lead to termination of a commenter’s access. In the commenting interfaces in this sample, provider inscriptions refer either to topic norms or interaction norms. With topic-oriented norms providers express in their terms of use or policy guidelines that they want comments to be on-topic, factual, objective, nonrepetitive, not simply affirmative as well as comprehensible. These norms demonstrate that most providers follow civic ideals concerning factuality, referentiality, comprehensibility and the better argument as formulated in theories of deliberation. Der Standard explicitly encourages its commenters to substantiate their statements with facts, proofs and sources and to stay constructive in their critique of other people’s opinions:
Figure 6.8: Screenshot from Der Standard website’s terms of service (http://derstandard.at/2934632/Forenregeln-Community-Richtlinien) ‘3. Factual Argumentation: Support your argument with comprehensible reasons, name sources and refer to other users’ arguments in an objective manner. Please refrain from non-verifiable insinuations and suspicions. Constructive criticism is welcomed, as long as it is respectful and objectively formulated and refers to specific arguments.’ (Translation by author)
In order to enable an inviting debate that is open to everyone, many providers stress the importance of comprehensibility. In particular, the transnational news outlets such as Charlemagne and the Financial Times request that comments are written in English. Other news media specify that comments should be written in
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clear language and should be understandable. The Guardian explicitly points out that sarcasm or irony do not transmit well in written communication and might easily be misunderstood. Libération wants commenters to avoid what they call ‘SMS language’. The intention is to make comments easily understandable for everyone in order to encourage an inclusive discussion of the topic at hand. These topic-oriented norms are in many cases enforced through technical restrictions on the interface. Spiegel Online and Charlemagne explicitly state that the word limitations in their comment entry fields are meant to prevent comments exceeding a certain length. Instead, people should stay on topic in short and concise comments. The Financial Times explains that commenters who try to circumvent their word limitation by posting a comment in several parts might have their comment deleted. Spiegel Online and the Financial Times also state in their terms of use that comments should not simply repeat a point of view that has already been expressed. The Financial Times informs its users that ‘[c]omments may be removed if they repeat points already made by the same commenter, or if they appear to be part of an organised campaign’ (FT Guidelines). These forms of spamming (posting the same or similar comment multiple times) as well as flooding (posting very high numbers of comments) are prohibited in most commenting interfaces in this sample. But the fact that we now have terms to describe such phenomena demonstrates the regularity in which people engage in these practices, despite the attempts of providers to prevent people from doing so. While criticism and heated debates are accepted by most providers in this sample, they still uphold deliberative ideals. In order to strengthen factual discussions, providers urge commenters to target their criticism at the message rather than the messenger. Or as the Financial Times formulates it: ‘play the ball, not the man/woman’ (FT Guidelines). Consequently, another standard element in interface inscriptions concerns the prohibition of uncivil, offensive, threatening, harmful, and illegal content. The Guardian has one of the most encompassing descriptions of what comments should not be. It especially emphasises that comments should not harm others, contribute to an unsafe environment or should have a commercial or advertising character. Providers thus articulate their anticipations for how people should comment on an issue under discussion as a normative orientation, which subsequently becomes the basis upon which providers conduct their moderation:
Dimensions of interface inscriptions
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Figure 6.9: Screenshot from the Guardian website’s terms of service (https://www.theguardian.com/help/terms-of-service)
Another set of norms concerns how commenters should act with regard to each other. Der Standard formulates this as follows:
Figure 6.10: Screenshot from Der Standard website's terms of service http://derstandard.at/2934632/Forenregeln-Community-Richtlinien ‘Deal with others respectfully: Treat other users, people mentioned in articles and STANDARD staff with respect and consideration and avoid hostilities. Ensure that you do not diminish or ridicule anyone. Abuse, threats and insults as well as damage to one’s reputation or business will not be accepted.’ (Translation by author)
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These interaction norms elucidate provider expectations for successfully shared discourse. They again promote such civic ideals as fairness, respect and mutual appreciation in deliberative encounters. Terms of use and policy guidelines across almost all interfaces in this sample, for example, state that other commenters should be treated in a friendly, respectful, considerate and fair manner. Many providers thus pre-emptively try to avoid a potential escalation of comments into insults and abuse. However, they also acknowledge the importance of conflict and disagreement, thereby moving somewhat beyond purely deliberative ideals. Many commenting guidelines acknowledge that discussions can be heated and that people might feel strongly about a debate. But although disagreements between commenters are considered legitimate, as Spiegel Online explicitly spells out, they should be conducted in a civil and fair tone. Der Standard, furthermore, asks its commenters not to respond when they are provoked or insulted. Constructive criticism is encouraged in cases of disagreement. This acknowledging of conflict and disagreement as a valid form of online commenting represents the only reference in provider inscriptions to antagonistic forms of civic online communication. Yet overall, the aim is to create a safe environment where people can engage in stimulating discussion and are protected from harassment and other forms of illegal behaviour. Thus, in addition to moderation most interfaces use flagging systems to report comments that violate any norms. The Guardian sees reporting abuse as a step towards establishing a beneficial environment for everyone:
Figure 6.11: Screenshot from The Guardian website's Community standards and participation guidelines (https://www.theguardian.com/community-standards)
Dimensions of interface inscriptions
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This attempt to make commenters take responsibility exemplifies how providers rely on people’s practices in creating the spaces of online commenting that they desire. They acknowledge that implementing their interests and anticipations concerning people’s practices purely in a top-down manner can only be partially effective. On the one hand, discussion norms relating to how people should interact with each other thus mirror the ideals of civic communication that providers of commenting interfaces put forward. On the other, these norms are also implemented to cover the legal and ethical interests of providers against unwanted and at times even illegal commenting practices, such as extreme forms of harassment and abuse. Providers intend to legally indemnify themselves against any claims that could arise from illegal behaviour commenters might engage in. They specifically prohibit the publication of personal information about others. This practice, which is in severe forms known as ‘doc propping’ or ‘doxing’, has become a well-known form of privacy violation. Moderators will not only delete such comments, but might also terminate access. When it comes to their legal interests, providers exercise very tight control through the interface.
6.2.2 Community Discourse The second dimension along which providers inscribe their interests and anticipations of ideal usage into the commenting interfaces relates to the so-called community of commenters that providers like to promote. Within their guidelines and terms of use providers emphasise that they consider a stable community of users a necessary precondition for an active and engaging commenting space. By enabling commenters to interact and build relationships with each other, providers want to promote a shared discourse about an issue in their commenting sections. In so doing, they also pursue economic interests. If people identify strongly with a commenting space and frequently engage in discussions with fellow commenters, they repeatedly return to the website in question. Thus, most news media employ community managers or social media editors to promote people’s identification with and sense of community regarding a website. Furthermore, providers like to stress the importance of the community of com-
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menters to make people feel responsible for the commenting space. They strategically make use of and co-opt people’s involvement for their own purposes. Across the analysed interfaces inscriptions relating to people’s interactive exchange and their identity management are considered particularly relevant for building and maintaining a community of commenters. In most cases, the interfaces are produced so as to only allow very narrowly pre-defined ways for people to interact with each other. While providers thus create opportunities for people to exchange and build a commenting identity, they also limit the ways in which people are able to do so. People’s interactive exchange is encouraged by providers in order to promote shared discourses and to deepen a sense of community. This close connection between discussion and community is a historical continuity that has developed from the earliest online forums in the 1970s and 1980s (cf. chapter 2.1). As a consequence, most commenting interfaces contain diverse functions through which commenters can reference and quote each other, provide feedback and rate each other’s comments. In doing so, providers seek to encourage commenters to engage in shared discourses about the issue at hand. At the same time, they also use these functions to identify relevant content for their commenters. Comments that are, for instance, rated highly by others can be filtered or displayed more prominently. These feedback buttons do not offer people a broad range of opportunities to act. People can use these buttons or refrain from doing so. But if people recommend and rate comments, they generate metrics that providers use to identify relevant content:
Figure 6.12: Screenshot from the Guardian's website Community FAQs https://www.theguardian.com/community-faqs
Dimensions of interface inscriptions
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Accordingly, Der Standard and The Guardian point out that their recommendation buttons are a means through which commenters can express which comments they deem noteworthy. What the community deems noteworthy seems to be what providers anticipate other commenters will find relevant. But providers also include interface functions that allow people to decide for themselves what content they find relevant and interesting. They enable commenters to customize how they want to engage with other commenters, for example through filtering and ordering functions. Providers stipulate that shared discourses about a topic depend on people finding other commenters with whom they would like to have a discussion. Thus, Der Standard offers a toolbar through which commenters can chose various ways of displaying a comment thread. They can filter all postings or only top postings, and they can select postings either from the last 15, 30, 60 minutes or from the last 24 hours. They can also order comments from newest to oldest and vice versa as well as from most positive to most negative evaluated and vice versa:
Figure 6.13: Screenshot from Der Standard website, showing filter and ordering options
Der Standard, Libération and Guido Fawkes furthermore offer the possibility for people to follow or subscribe to other commenters. These functions are intended to strengthen interactions, but they can also be turned on their head when commenters start harassing others systematically. Consequently, the three interfaces also enable users to block unwanted followers or ignore particular commenters in a commenting thread. This tendency toward self-customization is contrary to the top-down control exercised by many providers. Instead, each individual is
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responsible for how they want to interact with others. Providers thus give people more options to act through the interface. By offering more options to act through the interface, providers again highlight that each individual commenter as well as the commenting community is responsible for the commenting space. Reporting and flagging buttons have already been mentioned for their role in ensuring that discussion norms are upheld, which also includes how commenters should interact. Should interactions not evolve in a civil and respectful manner, The Guardian and Der Standard ask everyone to flag hostile and uncivil content. They stress that all members need to take responsibility by reporting deviating commenting practices:
Figure 6.14: Screenshot from The Guardian website's community FAQs (https://www.theguardian.com/community-faqs)
But the ways in which people can take action is very narrowly predefined through reporting and flagging buttons. This is necessary from a provider perspective in order to strategically make use of people’s involvement (cf. Crawford and Gillespie 2016). As the above quote from The Guardian’s community guidelines demonstrates, asking people to flag content can be considered a form of user co-optation. Instead of investing more in moderation, providers ask their users to take over that role. Flagging and reporting buttons can thus be seen from two sides: either as an interface function through which commenters can demonstrate their shared responsibility for the commenting spaces or as a moneysaving means of user co-optation. The so-called community of commenters furthermore depends on commenters creating and managing a commenting identity. The first way in which people present themselves in a comment section is through their personal profile. In almost all interfaces in this sample registering with a personal profile is a pre-
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condition for commenting. By making registration obligatory, providers thus exercise control quite restrictively through the interface. This is, on the one hand, necessary from a provider perspective in order to identify commenters in case they need to be held accountable for their actions. It ensures that the profiles of people who violate commenting guidelines can be identified and deleted. In severe cases of illegal behaviour, it will also facilitate criminal prosecution. The mandatory registration with a valid email address thus also serves the legal and ethical interests of providers. On the other hand, registration also makes commenters recognizable within the commenting space. People depend on creating a commenting identity based on their personal profile when they establish long-standing relationships with each other, which is why providers also consider identity management a prerequisite for engaging discussions. Such repeated exchanges furthermore mean that people will continuously visit the comment forum in question, thereby also serving the economic interests of providers. Most providers in this sample consider authenticity the basis for a valid and stable commenting identity and consequently for a commenting community. Many interface inscriptions request commenters to create authentic profiles. Commenters are asked not to create multiple profiles (The Guardian, Libération), not to disguise the origin of a message (Financial Times, Charlemagne, Der Standard) or impersonate other commenters (The Guardian, Financial Times, Der Standard). A profile mostly contains personal information. Libération in its 2012 version, for instance, offered profiles in the style of social networking sites, where people could post self-descriptive texts and personal information about themselves. Many other interfaces displayed a repository with all or at least the most recently written comments (Spiegel Online, Libération, The Guardian, Der Standard, Charlemagne). This repository not only represents the standpoint of a given commenter, but also allows people to search for relevant content. The Guardian for instance allows people to search for specific terms within all the comments a user has written. Based on their profile and their commenting history commenters build up a commenting identity over time. As a consequence and as the subsequent steps of the analysis will demonstrate, people recognize each other and their respective positions in a comment discussion. In order to maintain a ‘healthy’ commenting community, providers urge everyone to report the profiles of people who repeat-
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edly violate forum guidelines, but they also recognize if a profile is highly regarded, intensely connected and frequently recommended within a community. As already mentioned, Der Standard uses these parameters as the basis for the algorithm through which they identify top comments that they specially promote. The commenting community and every individual commenter is thus asked to ensure that the commenting spaces are inviting and beneficial to everyone.
Figure 6.15: Screenshot from the Guardian website, personal profile with comment history
6.2.3 Loyalty and Distribution As already hinted at providers also pursue economic interests when implementing a commenting interface, thus many interface functions are intended to strengthen commenters’ loyalty to the commenting space that providers offer. Notification systems, for instance, should make commenters return repeatedly to a commenting site. Thus, comment sections are seen as a way to create brand loyalty and to boost a particular site’s traffic. Or as a news representative in a study by Marina Vujnovic stated: ‘It’s not just getting the eyes on your site (…) It’s getting them to stay on your site’ (Vujnovic 2011: 144). Furthermore, commenters and other page visitors are not only encouraged to act within the inhouse commenting interface that providers offer, but are also encouraged through sharing buttons to distribute content across multiple platforms. Here,
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providers can again be seen as co-opting people for their interest in circulating their content as widely as possible. But aside from their economic interests, providers like to argue that making more and more people aware of their content will lead more diverse voices into the shared debate on an issue. Interface inscriptions that implement online commenting as a way to promote loyalty and distribution can be differentiated into lingering strategies, outreach functions as well as media support. With lingering strategies providers intend to make people stay on their websites as long as possible. Detailed data on user traffic, time spent on a site or whether users engage in user-generated content are considered relevant information for the news media organisation itself but also for advertising clients (Vujnovic 2011: 146). Keeping someone on a site or making them return is thus an important economic interest, which providers aim to realize through notification systems or RSS feeds, recommendation functions or reading lists where people can archive content to read later. The news media interfaces in this sample offered these functions, as did the German blog Spiegelfechter. The French Libération even introduced a new email notification system as one of four major changes to their interface in 2012. These interface functions inform commenters as soon as someone reacts to their comment or if new information is available on the site. This includes directing people towards content they might find relevant, which quite a few news media in this analysis do by identifying top comments or postings. Both Der Standard as well as The Financial Times chose so-called editor picks:
Figure 6.16: Screenshot from The Financial Times Guidelines (http://help.ft.com/tools-services/commenting/)
The Guardian likewise identifies featured comments, which they promote on their opinion page Comment is free. On the one hand, providers select especially noteworthy comments as a service to their users. At the same time, these com-
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ments also set prominent examples of the kinds of commenting practices that providers would like people to engage in. Another common feature across the interfaces in this sample concerns outreach functions. All interfaces offer social plug-ins through which people can promote and distribute a website’s content across many other platforms. They can, for instance, up-vote, like, share or retweet articles from the original website and also comment on these articles on a different platform than the in-house commenting interface. Most social plug-ins on the interfaces in this sample link to major social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or Google+. When it comes to social plug-ins and external commenting systems, the providers of the commenting interfaces in this sample can no longer control what these specific interface functions allow their commenters to do. The social networking sites provide these interface functions for others to use. Accordingly, they pre-configure what these buttons allow people to do. The Facebook developers pages promotes its social plug-ins as a way to ‘[g]row your audience by making it easy for your readers to like, share or send stories from your website or app to their friends on Facebook’.3 As this quote demonstrates, social plug-ins are intended to enable people to share content across websites to serve the economic motives of a news media organisation. In so doing, they contribute towards what Carolin Gerlitz and Anne Helmond (2013) have labelled the increasing reliance on user metrics in the like economy. However, providers can choose among different pre-defined social plug-ins. Across the forums in this sample, three different Twitter and five different Facebook plug-ins were identified. They can roughly be distinguished based on whether someone shares content with friends and followers, whether they can add their own short statements or whether they are forwarded to a news media’s Facebook or Twitter account. Depending on what a social plug-in is programmed to do, people can either continue to comment on the respective news medium’s or blog’s social networking site account or on their own personal profile page. The former means that an article will be commented on in a group of mostly unknown commenters, whereas the latter means that the article can be discussed in a group of personal friends and followers.
3
(Facebook Developers, https://developers.facebook.com/products/social-plugins/, Accessed 6 April 2017)
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Another way of demonstrating user loyalty is by supporting the news medium or blog behind a commenting interface. The news media in this sample already consider the activity of commenting as a form of media support. Some providers specifically state that they value commenting for its ability to give people a channel through which they can provide feedback to the news organisation (cf. Charlemagne, Spiegel Online, Der Standard). Several news media, therefore, encourage people to give feedback to their publicists through various interface functions. The Guardian offered the opportunity to engage with the news media organisation or with specific journalists or editors via email, with their social networking profiles or through specific feedback buttons on the interface. Such feedback loops can even give audiences the role of a ‘watchdog on the watchdogs’ – a role for users that news workers in a transnational study on participatory journalism practices approved of quite highly (Singer 2009: 125). Instead of providing nuanced feedback as providers wish, these functions are often used for abusing, harassing and threatening journalists. That is why Der Standard explicitly asks its commenters to treat their employees with respect. Beyond feedback as a form of support, the blogs in this sample also encourage their visitors to support them in a more material form. The non-commercial German blog Spiegelfechter incorporates a flattr button through which readers can give micro donations.
6.2.4 Legal and ethical liabilities Providers not only articulate deliberative or community norms in order to promote specific forms of civic online discussion, but also to cover their legal interests. The technical language in which many terms of use or community guidelines are formulated exemplifies how they serve to protect providers from legal liabilities. But providers equally articulate ethical standards for comment discussions within them. While legal concerns pose an external restraint, ethical concerns are mostly internal restraints by the organisation itself (Singer 2009: 122123). The news media organisations and news workers behind many comment sections, including those in this sample, specifically lay out established journalistic quality criteria for evaluating people’s comments. These standards include dedication to truthfulness, accuracy, fairness, decency and the avoidance of libel
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or copyright violations (Singer 2009: 128). When it comes to legal and ethical liabilities, providers strictly control in a top-down manner how people can comment within their interfaces. Out of self-protection against legal claims but also due to journalistic standards, they will not accept any divergent commenting practices. The interface inscriptions that cover providers’ legal and ethical interests consequently relate to people’s accountability, moderation of comments and the news media organisation’s indemnity. Through a registration process providers ensure that commenters can be held accountable for their actions. In almost all interfaces in this sample registration is mandatory. It is the strictest way in which providers exercise control through the interface. As a non-negotiable interface inscription, it guarantees that commenters can be identified, but also grants people anonymity when commenting online. Furthermore, by signing up to a comment section, people accept the obligation to abide by any commenting rules formulated in the community guidelines or terms of use. The Economist’s terms of use, for instance, state the following:
Figure 6.17: Screenshot from The Economist (Charlemagne) website's Terms of Use http://www.economist.com/legal/terms-of-use
By agreeing to comply with these rules, commenters can subsequently be held accountable if they violate them. These guidelines go further than the norms for how people should discuss the issue at hand and interact with each other. They constitute the basis on which providers exercise content moderation, terminate or suspend someone’s access or even in severe cases allow criminal prosecution. Moderation also demonstrates how strictly providers can exercise control through their interface. In order to ensure a certain standard of discussion, moderators and community managers can edit people’s comments, delete them completely, refrain from publishing certain comments in the first place, ban people
Dimensions of interface inscriptions
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from posting for a certain time or delete entire profiles. While the registration process is a pre-emptive attempt to cover their legal and ethical interests, moderation works retrospectively. Through moderation providers have the last word over what is published in a commenting space. For the commenting interfaces in this analysis, this can either mean pre-moderation with both automated and manual moderation as well as post-moderation. Here, providers’ legal as well as ethical interests coalesce. They signal that some commenting standards are nonnegotiable, which is necessary because providers can be held accountable for illegal content that is posted on their site and not removed in good time. But the providers in this sample also inform their commenters that they will act in the event of severe law violations, for instance relating to concrete threats and incitement of harm. As Spiegel Online states, they reserve the right to pass on information to legal authorities and if necessary trigger criminal prosecution of individual commenters. Providers do not only have to ensure that they can be held harmless for any illegal content commenters might post. They equally need to indemnify themselves by obtaining all rights to the content that people publish. Passages like the following example from Charlemagne can be found across the interfaces in this analysis:
Figure 6.18: Screenshot from The Economist (Charlemagne) website's Terms of Use http://www.economist.com/legal/terms-of-use
Providers especially cover themselves with regard to copyright infringements and publication rights, meaning that they secure the right to publish, alter, delete, edit, archive, re-use and commercially exploit people’s comments without having to provide financial compensation – as for example the Financial Times states:
Figure 6.19: Screenshot from the Financial Times website's terms and conditions (http://help.ft.com/legal/ft-com-terms-and-conditions/)
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Many providers furthermore state that any illegal behaviour in online comments will not be accepted, which includes posting content containing malware or viruses. They distance themselves from the posted content and thus from any legal claims, stating that all responsibility remains with the commenter Hence providers severely control people’s commenting through moderation and registration processes, but deny any legal responsibility for the content of those comments. In any case, within their interface inscriptions providers establish online commenting as a potential threat to their ethical standards and legal interests against which they need to take precaution.
6.3
Means of interface inscription
After investigating the specific meanings that providers inscribe into their individual commenting interfaces (chapter 6.1) and how by doing so they establish overarching meanings of online commenting (chapter 6.2), I now turn to the question of how exactly providers inscribe these meanings into their interfaces. I thus address what constitutes the formative potential of the commenting interfaces in this sample and how it is implemented. At this point, I return to the questions set out at the beginning of this chapter. I have discussed previous work on the power of platforms (Gillespie 2010, 2015), on non-transparent interfaces (Lammes 2016: 4), on the role that technology plays in the redesign of public space (van Dijck and Poell 2015: 3) or on the entanglement of the social with media as infrastructures for communication (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 7). By analysing the specific case of online commenting, I demonstrate how the formative potential of media technologies is neither a simple top-down implementation of meanings through the interface, nor a linear exercise of control by the producers of these technologies. Instead, my analysis demonstrates that providers engage in a continuum of control when trying to implement specific meanings for online commenting through their commenting interfaces. The providers behind the commenting interfaces in this analysis act most forcefully on people’s practices through restrictions. Here, providers exercise control directly over people’s practices in the most confining way, often forcing and obliging people to do particular things. A second way for providers to inscribe their interests comes in the form of options. Here, people are offered the
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opportunity to act within the interface and to exercise certain options. While commenters can choose to make use of these options or not, providers pre-define quite precisely what kinds of functions these options serve within their interfaces. A third way for providers to inscribe meaning is through guidelines. They serve as an orientation for commenters and explicitly spell out provider anticipations of what kind of spaces they wish their comment forums to be. Guidelines as such do not force people to engage in particular practices, but they are the basis upon which content moderators make their decisions. Providers of commenting interface can thus force people to do certain things when commenting online. At the same time, the formative potential of digital media technologies equally works through encouraging people to follow certain norms and offering opportunities to act freely within the interface. These two sides reflect the continuum of control that providers exercise through their interface inscriptions.
6.3.1 Restrictions Through restrictions on the interface providers set non-negotiable preconditions for people’s commenting. They describe the strictest form of control through the interface. Restrictions can be described as gateways through which commenters must pass or comply with in order to have their comments published. These preconditions are implemented either by obliging people to carry out certain actions if they want to post comments. Alternatively, they are executed when providers manage existing comments and by doing so have the last word over what is published in a commenting space. One can therefore distinguish between pre-commenting and postcommenting restrictions. Pre-commenting restrictions are implemented within the interface before people write and post their comments. They include profile registration and identification, in some cases paying a subscription to the news media behind a comment forum, and the word limit in a comment post. Postcommenting restrictions mostly consist of comment moderation, which allows providers and managers to maintain control over what is published. They have the ultimate say and can overrule any deviating commenting practices. As either/or categories, in the sense that commenters either abide or not comment at
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all, restrictions are the most rigidly executed form of control within the commenting interfaces. At the same time, restrictions are also the least implemented form in which providers inscribe meaning. They are often implemented when providers seek to protect themselves from legal liabilities, for example when they need to be able to hold people accountable and prevent them from engaging in illegal behaviour. Especially when it comes to questions of moderation, restrictions as a severe form of control over people’s practices often trigger strong protest from commenters. Overall, moderation is considered to be a key component in maintaining a commenting space free of hate speech and radicalism, and which remains a safe and civil environment for commenters. This explains how news workers need to balance different journalistic principles (Braun and Gillespie 2011: 384). They aim to establish a sensible discussion among commenters – sometimes by deleting certain comments. At the same time, they also want to stay true to journalistic principles of free speech and freedom of expression – to which they are also held accountable by their commenters. Restrictions as a way of inscribing meaning into an interface can thus potentially become an object of dispute between providers and commenters. Thus, although restrictions represent a severe form of control through the interface, they still need to be seen as part of the circular process in which producers of media technologies and the people appropriating these technologies negotiate their respective sense-making. Sometimes even powerful providers of social networking platforms are forced to adjust their interfaces after people’s protests (cf. boyd 2008). But as the many discontinued comment sections in mainstream news media demonstrate,4 providers might equally solve such disputes by ceasing to offer certain technological features at all. While the level of control exercised through interface restrictions poses important questions about people’s ability to act freely in digital media, its limits also need to be recognized. Even these heavily restricted forms of inscription still offer people the opportunity for creative appropriation. This becomes apparent, for example, in people’s choice of profile name as part of their registration. Registration is purely a technical precondition in order to be identifiable and 4
e.g. The Telegraph, CNN, Reuters, The Verge, Motherboard (https://www.wired.com/2015/10/brief-history-of-the-demise-of-the-comments-timeline/ Accessed 10 April 2017)
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possibly held accountable for one’s actions. But the commenters in this analysis used the registration process to create specific identities through their choice of profile names, often alluding to certain political, national, religious or other affiliations.
6.3.2 Options Options are by far the most common form in which providers inscribe meaning into the interfaces of online commenting. They describe technical features on the interfaces that offer people communicative opportunities and enable commenters to act within the interface. Compared with restrictions and guidelines, options offer the highest level of interpretive flexibility. However, it is necessary to note that this flexibility ranges along a continuum. On the one hand, these opportunities to act within the interface can be very limited. When commenters can like, up-vote, share or flag a comment through the click of a button, their ability to act remains very limited. On the other hand, options on the interface can enable people to customize their engagement with a commenting space, e.g. by subscribing to RSS feeds or notifications, by blocking or following certain commenters, by saving and archiving specific articles or posts, etc. The highest level of interpretive flexibility is when people are able to produce content themselves – by writings comments, by addressing others, by maintaining their profile, by direct messaging and by giving feedback to the news organization or blogger behind a commenting space. Especially when writing the actual comments, people can engage in various different commenting practices, as chapter 7 will demonstrate. Even though options offer people opportunities, providers still define where, when and how liberally commenters can act within the interface. By limiting people’s interpretive flexibility to a minimum, they predetermine quite restrictively the meaning that people can come to associate with certain functions. Kate Crawford and Tarleton Gillespie (2016) have shown with reference to the flagging button in social networking sites how people’s ability to report other people’s uncivil behaviour is heavily loaded with the interests of website providers to outsource decision-making over content deletion to its users.
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Providers thus inscribe their own interests into options on the interface by deciding to leave little room for people to interpret these options in alternative ways. But as with restrictions, providers do not always make use of such severe forms of control through the interface. Instead, they leave options on the interface where people can engage in divergent and unanticipated practices, which might make further restrictions and guidelines - the other two forms of interface inscriptions - necessary. But the analysis demonstrates that providers across the interfaces in this sample continuously balance the degree of control through the interface with people’s interpretive flexibility.
6.3.3 Guidelines Compared with restrictions and options, guidelines are the least intrusive form in which providers inscribe meaning within their commenting interfaces. But they offer a possibility to spell out exactly what anticipations providers have regarding people’s commenting practices. Guidelines usually come in the form of forum policies or terms of use. Therein, providers make clear what kinds of commenting practices they would like people to engage in and what they would like them to refrain from doing. Consequently, they offer providers an opportunity to describe in detail their ideas of ideal usage. These guidelines often concern the way that people should react to the news item or blog post, to other commenters, to content moderators, journalists and the news organization in general. They advise commenters that non-compliance with these rules might lead to a deletion of their comments and in severe cases, when comments incite hatred, might even result in criminal prosecution. Because guidelines are simple text documents, they do not exercise control over people’s practices. But they are the basis upon which restrictions such as content moderation are implemented. Even though guidelines are not restrictively controlling, they are important elements in creating, promoting and establishing specific commenting practices. They make transparent how interfaces are meaningfully produced. Here, providers spell out explicitly what purpose specific interface inscriptions are intended to achieve. They articulate what their intentions were when programming the interface in a specific way. Because the technical features on an interface are,
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however, multifarious in their potential significations, people retain the ability to create alternative significations in their practices. Although guidelines are only passively inscribed within an interface, they need to be seen in their ensemble with restrictions and options on the commenting interfaces. Guidelines spell out the principles that later become enforced in the attempts of community managers or social media editors to cultivate certain commenting practices, often with a heavy hand.
6.4
Civic communication in commenting interfaces
The analysis has demonstrated how providers configure online commenting as a specific form of civic communication through their interface inscriptions, on the level of each comment forum as well as generally by establishing online commenting in a specific form beyond the individual commenting interface. The different types of interfaces that result from these inscriptions envisage commenting as an extension to journalistic reporting (informative interfaces), as a discussion in an interactive community (discursive interfaces), as a debate among a small group of peers (confined interfaces) or as fleeting engagement between a group of unknown others (volatile interfaces). By producing these types of interfaces providers express concrete ideas and anticipations for people’s commenting practices. The overarching dimensions of interface inscriptions further demonstrate that these anticipations put forward an idea of online commenting as a specific form of civic communication beyond the individual commenting interface. According to these inscriptions, people’s commenting practices should be oriented along deliberative norms, where people respectfully engage in a factual and objective community discourse. Accordingly, providers want commenting to uphold certain ethical standards that are informed by journalistic norms. Furthermore, every member of the commenting community shares responsibility in creating commenting spaces along these ideals of commenting as a form of civic communication. However, violations are frequent, which is why providers legally indemnify themselves against any practices that not only diverge from the spelt-out deliberative ideals but are also in some cases illegal. At the same time, online comment-
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ing equally serves the economic interests of the news media organisations. It is seen as a way to increase and maintain the level of page visits as well as to strengthen people’s loyalty to their website. Furthermore, people’s involvement in the commenting spaces are co-opted for distributing content across multiple platforms. The ways in which providers configure online commenting as a form of civic communication relies on people being restricted by the interface, on offering certain options to act within the interface as well as on articulating guidelines along which commenters should orient their practices. This continuum of control along which providers inscribe meaning into their commenting interfaces nonetheless shows how interface inscriptions still leave people room for alternative appropriations. Although providers articulate specific meanings, people’s practices can diverge from these anticipations to some extent. That is why Braun and Gillespie have argued that commenting cannot only be managed by implementing written policies and by designing the interfaces in specific ways. It is equally necessary to foster community norms which provide orientation (Braun and Gillespie 2011: 384). Simply compelling people to do certain things does not seem to be viewed as feasible by providers. In fact, severe cases of control within commenting interfaces often trigger discussions about who ‘owns’ the space in online comment forums – the providers or the commenters (Robinson 2010: 138). As one editor of an US online news media website put it in an ethnographic study by Jane Singer: ‘simply policing the community is not enough. You have to do stuff to encourage the kind of behavior you do want, as well as just stamping out the kind of behavior you don’t.’ (Singer 2009: 128). Thus, while providers still set the field in which people establish their practices, they reflect on the many different practices that people will actually engage in. What shape civic communication in online commenting actually takes can accordingly not simply be deduced from an analysis of the technology. Nevertheless, it needs to be acknowledged that providers set a more or less restrictive frame for people’s online commenting as a form of civic online communication. They can implement specific ideas of what civic communication in contemporary digital democracies should and could look like. But by considering the entanglement of interfaces with people’s practices, the analysis demonstrates beyond the case of online commenting that there is no unidirectional influence of
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media technologies on people’s related practices, as classical theories on the socio-technical constitution of media technologies have highlighted. The analysis, therefore, argues against one-sided and over-simplifying perspectives concerning the controlling power of digital media technologies. While providers of technologies can intrusively shape people’s practices, their potential for resistance and divergence needs to be equally acknowledged. Severe forms of restrictions through the interface are not very common in commenting interfaces. There is no simple top-down implementation of provider interests and control of people’s commenting practices. Setting a frame for online commenting through the interface does not work without recognizing the relevance of people’s diverse practices. These manifold commenting practices will be addressed in the following chapter.
7
Meaning within practices: Setting the tone for online commenting
In this chapter I present the many diverse commenting practices that people engage in when appropriating the interfaces in this analysis and how by doing so they establish online commenting in a specific form. As has been demonstrated, providers of online news media, political blogs and their respective social networking sites implement certain meanings for online commenting through their interface inscriptions. But the commenters themselves equally set the tone for online commenting as a form of civic online communication in their commenting practices. That is why a dialectical approach needs to complement an analysis of the commenting technology with an analysis of how people appropriate commenting interfaces in their commenting practices. Such an approach takes into account the fact that commenters can resist the anticipations and expectations that providers intended to realize through their interface inscriptions. In a de Certeauian sense, people in their tactical appropriation transform commenting interfaces into spaces or in other words into practiced places (de Certeau 1984: 117). Only by considering how people make sense of commenting interfaces can I assess in what ways online commenting constitutes digital spaces of civic communication. The specific tonality of online commenting is generated by people’s commenting practices due their habitualized and routinized character as communicative acts (Reckwitz 2002: 249; Warde 2014: 283/292). Furthermore, practices are collective accomplishments (Barnes 2001: 31), which are enacted within people’s coordinated and mutually oriented communicative actions. They are not arbitrary communicative acts. Instead, they can be described through what Erving Goffman has termed the interaction order (1983), or in other words socially conveyed forms of interaction. Within their appropriation people establish certain practices as typical for online commenting. A description of these commenting practices consequently provides insights into the ways in which people estab© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 A. Mollen, Digital Spaces of Civic Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0_7
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lish an interaction order for online commenting beyond the specific interactional situation. The results of my interaction analysis of the typical commenting practices that people engage in demonstrate that many commenting practices are not anticipated or articulated by providers in their interface inscriptions. I differentiate more relation-oriented and more issue-oriented interactions in people’s commenting (cf. Table 7.1). Relation- and issue-oriented interaction can be considered the overarching elements in the interaction order that underpin online commenting in this sample. At the same time, they are both orderly and structured in themselves. They can be described through a number of specific typical commenting practices that people engage in. Issue-oriented interactions comprise demarcations, interpretations and discussions. These commenting practices correspond with the normative ideas concerning a shared deliberative discourse that providers seek to implement within their commenting interfaces. Relationoriented interactions consist of small talk and phatic communication, jokes, disputes and reprimands. Although relation-oriented interactions are important for constituting relations between commenters, which some providers expressly aim for, their corresponding commenting practices are generally not explicitly anticipated by providers as relevant for online commenting. Some practices in relation-oriented interactions even stand explicitly contrary to provider interests. However, as this analysis demonstrates, they are essential for creating spaces of social encounter in online commenting, where people can discuss civic and political issues more along the lines of what providers anticipate. Table 7.1: Relation- and issue-oriented interactions and their respective commenting practices
Relation-oriented interactions
Commenting practices
Small talk and phatic communication
Greetings, Firsties, Lifeworld referencing, (Dis-)Approving
Jokes
Inventing stories, Taking out of context, Making fun
Disputes
Criticising, Discrediting, Insulting and harassing, Backbiting
Reprimands
Articulating commenting rules
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Issue-oriented interactions
Commenting practices
Demarcations
Referencing, Summarizing and informing, Attributing responsibility, Evaluating
Interpretations
Deducing, Translating, Speculating
Discussions
Positioning, Supporting and contradicting
Both relation- and issue-oriented interactions must be seen in their interrelation when constituting digital spaces of civic communication in online commenting. In any case, this distinction does not mean that relation-oriented commenting practices do not have an issue or specific content to them or that issue-oriented commenting practices would not constitute relations with interaction partners. Instead, it highlights a different focal point in people’s commenting practices. In other words, the distinction in relation- and issue-oriented interactions in people’s commenting practices is in accordance with Paul Watzlawick’s observation that communication always has a content as well as a relational dimension to it: ‘To avoid any misunderstanding about the foregoing, we want to make it clear that relationships are only rarely defined deliberately or with full awareness. In fact, it seems that the more spontaneous and ‘healthy’ a relationship, the more the relationship aspect of communication recedes into the background. Conversely, ‘sick’ relationships are characterized by a constant struggle about the nature of the relationship, with the content aspect of communication becoming less and less important.’ (Watzlawick et al. 1967: 33) As the analysis will demonstrate, when commenting online people often make their relationship the main focus in their interactional encounter. In doing so, the content aspect and the focus on the political or civic issue under discussion is neglected in favour of making connections and building relationships with each other. In other words, they cannot build on the spontaneous emergence of a relationship between them: they first need to create these relationships in their communicative encounters. In summary, commenters appropriate commenting interfaces both as social and as issue spaces. In the following, I will demonstrate that
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within the specific interactional situation people primarily focus on either the relational or the issue aspects in their communication. Overall, however, the two sides need to be seen in their interrelation when people set the tone for online commenting within their commenting practices.
7.1
Social spaces of online commenting
The interface analysis has demonstrated that a number of functions within the commenting interfaces offer commenters an opportunity to build and maintain connections with each other. They can reference and quote each other, they can respond to each other’s comments as well as provide feedback through up-voting or down-voting buttons or even send private messages. Further, the guidelines that providers put forward denote their comment forums as places where people are meant to interact and discuss issues collectively. Such interactions between multiple commenters must be constituted in people’s commenting practices. In the following, I identify the many different commenting practices that people engage in as part of their relation-oriented interactions. In the words of German sociologist Angela Keppler, communicative situations need to be considered as social events that are constituted through a number of distinct communicative patterns (Keppler 1994: 50-51). Thus, I analyse how people enact the commenting interfaces in this sample as social spaces that rely on people constituting social relations and social encounters with each other in their relation-oriented commenting practices. I understand social relations with Max Weber as: ‘behavior of a plurality of actors insofar as, in its meaningful content, the action of each takes account of that of the others and is oriented in these terms. The social relationship thus constitutes entirely and exclusively in the existence of a probability that there will be meaningful course of social action – irrespective, for the time being, of the basis for this probability’ (Weber 1978: 26-27). I thus clearly acknowledge that social relations between commenters will also be constituted within issue-oriented interactions. However, following Watzlawick’s differentiation between the relation and content dimension in communication, I
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argue that in relation-oriented interactions people’s primary focus lies on articulating their relation to other commenters as potential interaction partners, rather than on the issue or content that is covered in the news article or blog post which commenters are meant to discuss. In their relation-oriented commenting practices, commenters concentrate on establishing social encounters with others. But in contrast to face-to-face encounters they first need to communicatively create a situation in which they are ‘in the immediate presence of others’ (Goffman 1983: 2) by appearing as a potential interaction partner in the commenting space and by addressing other potential interaction partners.
7.1.1 Small talk and phatic communication Small talk and phatic communication highlight how social encounters in commenting depend on people making an appearance through their commenting practices. They need to become visible in a commenting space in order to appear as potential interaction partners. When doing so, commenters do not necessarily contribute to discussing the topic at hand. Small talk and phatic communication thus establish online commenting as spaces where people build relations between themselves as interaction partners. The notion of phatic communication describes in this regard that communication cannot solely be understood as the transmission of messages from A to B, but also needs to be considered for its role in enabling social encounters (Reichertz 2009: 91). Bronislaw Malinowski coined the term after he observed in his ethnographic studies in the early 20th century that ritual communication in tribal communities was a necessary means for creating commonality and bonds between members of a community (Malinowski 1946: 339-430). The commenting practices that constitute phatic communication in online commenting therefore mostly address others. In small talk interactions people equally address other commenters. But they do so by focusing on their own appearance in the forum: by disclosing personal information, by making references to their everyday lives or simply by appearing in the forum in order to create a ground on which others can connect with them. Overall the commenting practices in small talk and phatic communication consist of greetings, firsties, lifeworld referencing and (dis-)approving.
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Greetings are very common across all comment forums in this sample. Commenters contribute to creating social spaces by directing a message to the unspecified mass of other commenters. By doing so, they allude to the presence of other potential interaction partners. In the following example from the Facebook page of the Austrian daily newspaper Der Standard, news workers for instance posted a link to an article with a short introductory phrase with which they wish their readers ‘Good Morning’. The first commenter likewise uses his or her comment to simply say ‘Good morning everyone’.
Figure 7.1: Facebook Der Standard, 27 June 2012
On the one hand, the commenter reacts to the news workers and their welcoming message. On the other, his or her greeting can be seen as a form of phatic com-
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munication in which the unspecified group of other page visitors is greeted. By greeting each other in this way, commenters step out of the invisible group of page visitors and position themselves as an actor with whom one could potentially engage in social encounters. Firsties are another common form through which commenters mark their presence in a commenting space. Without contributing towards a discussion or without contributing much content, people occasionally declare that they have posted the first comment under an article or blog post. Firsties have become an established and recognizable practice in comment sections (Powers 2015), even though the providers of commenting interfaces did not anticipate and probably do not even wish for people to declare that they are the first person to comment. Their status as a recognizable commenting phenomenon that has become known under its own label demonstrates how far people collectively establish typical forms in their commenting practices. People who are familiar with a particular commenting culture will recognize firsties and know how to categorize them. They can be considered a relation-oriented interaction, even though they do not as explicitly offer an opportunity for interaction as greetings. Nevertheless, firsties allow commenters to become visible and to make an appearance as a potential interaction partner. Lifeworld referencing as a typical commenting practice in small talk and phatic communication establishes social spaces in online commenting where people disclose information about themselves. These references build the basis upon which people might establish occasionally even long-standing relations with each other. By making references to their lifeworld, commenters go one step further than simply signalling their presence in a commenting space. Instead, they explicitly reveal information about themselves and their everyday lives. They present themselves not only as anonymous interaction partners, but they construct a commenting persona. Disclosing information about oneself can constitute the basis on which commenters articulate relations to each other in the first place or they can provide contextual information that might be relevant for mutually coordinating their commenting practices. They do so by telling stories about their everyday life or by picking up random topics in their comments. In the following example from The Guardian, one commenter, for instance, discloses his or her nationality in a small talk interaction in order to contextualize a previous comment:
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Figure 7.2: The Guardian, 26 June 2012, ‘Leaders draft federal plan to save the eurozone’
Previously, the same person posted a comment, which was meant to be humorous but was misunderstood by others – as the poster defended in further comments. This comment can be understood as an explanation for the previous interaction as well as an exit from it. It does not engage with the issue under discussion. But it demonstrates how this commenter is constructing a commenting persona, while at the same time addressing all previous interaction partners in an attempt to clarify the misunderstood interaction. Such references to one’s lifeworld allow commenters to gradually gain an understanding of other people in the commenting space. It establishes a basis on which further interactions and social relations might be established. That is why the referencing and quoting system within the commenting interfaces can become quite important in small talk interactions, although the number of participants and the length of interactions often remain rather low, as this conversation from Der Standard demonstrates:
Figure 7.3: Der Standard, 24 June 2012, ‘Terror der Ökonomie’ First commenter: ‘I like Misik’ Second commenter: ‘Why?’ First commenter: ‘Don’t really know – Sundays are usually terribly boring anyway, Mr Misik then comes at just the right time.’ [Translation by the author]
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In this example, two commenters again do not engage with the issue at hand, but rather commonly assess why the first person likes to watch the regular Sunday video blog post by Robert Misik. References to people’s lifeworld thus often lead to discussions about people’s attitudes, opinions or backgrounds. In commenting spaces like The Guardian, where often people from various national contexts interact, references to the lifeworld regularly occur with regard to their national belonging:
Figure 7.4: The Guardian, 29 June 2012, ‘Eurozone crisis live’
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As becomes apparent in this segment, the two commenters in this exchange know each other from previous encounters. It provides an example of how people become known under a certain commenting persona, which occasionally will even become the topic of discussion between interactants. References to the lifeworld, as in this specific case, thus not only allow for situational social encounters, but also contribute towards long-standing relations between commenters. Even though these small talk interactions do not focus on the euro crisis as their topic of discussion, knowing another commenter’s nationality matters for more issue-oriented interactions as the following chapters will demonstrate. The above examples have demonstrated how people cover issues in their comments which seem to be relevant or pressing for them – regardless of the current topic of discussion. In the context of this study, many comments across this analysis for instance related to the Euro Cup 2012, which took place during the time of sampling:
Figure 7.5: The Guardian, 29 June 2012, ‘Eurozone crisis live’
As the two responses to this comment demonstrate, such seemingly off-topic comments nevertheless trigger people to reply and to engage in interactions in which they establish relations with each other. Consequently, within the social spaces of online commenting the focus does not necessarily have to lie on the discussion of a specific topic at hand, but can also wander off. Although the providers of commenting interfaces do not anticipate these off-topic relationoriented interactions, they seem to constitute an important element through which people connect with and gain an understanding of each other. Other forms of phatic communication include short expressions of approval or disapproval. As a form of providing feedback, they constitute a central way through which people make their reactions and their relation to previous commenters visible in the social spaces of online commenting. These comments are
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usually very short and do not trigger any further comments. They can be described as a minimum reaction, which signals that a previous comment has been understood, liked or disliked. Approving or disapproving commenting practices might seem marginal, because they do not contribute any new information, story or narrative concerning the topic at hand. But they can be considered as a written substitute for backchannel behaviour or response cries (Goffman 1978) that would occur in direct communicative encounters. In commenting, people necessarily express their reaction in written form. They might, for example, want to express that they found a previous comment funny, as this example from the Facebook page of Spiegel Online demonstrates:
Figure 7.6: Facebook Spiegel Online, 28 June 2012 First commenter: ‘It is called Satire Summit !-)' [‘Satiregipfel’ is a well-known German political comedy show] Second commenter: ‘hahaha satire summit hahahahaha’ [Translation by the author]
Approving and disapproving as a commenting practice plays a central role in reciprocating an offer for interaction and for constituting social relations between commenters. Online commenting has even brought about a specific form of response cry:
Figure 7.7: Guido Fawkes, 01 July 2012, ‘Read Guido in the Daily Star Sunday’
Responding to a comment simply by posting ‘+1’ has become an established form through which commenters express their agreement. In this example, the commenter has posted a ‘+10’, which is meant to signal an even greater level of
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support. In the same way as with firsties, this way of approving or disapproving people’s comments demonstrates how people establish their own typical commenting practices. The providers of commenting interfaces acknowledge such forms of backchannel behaviour by incorporating them into their interfaces in the form of feedback buttons that allow people to up-vote or down-vote a certain comment. Their integration as a technical feature demonstrates the importance of people reacting to each other and for expressing relations in online commenting – even if these reactions are very short.
7.1.2 Jokes Jokes also contribute to constituting social spaces in online commenting, because they are implicitly directed at others and often trigger many short responses. When joking people usually engage in short relation-oriented interactions and social encounters. Jokes are by definition social in that they anticipate certain reactions from others – which they do in fact receive to quite a large extent. These reactions are not necessarily further comments, but often feedback reactions in the form of up-votes or down-votes. Extensive references to the topic under discussion are not relevant for these interactions, but commenters might make some marginal references to it. Reasoned and factual arguments concerning the issue under discussion, as the providers of commenting interfaces wish to cultivate, are thus not the only way in which an issue can be discussed. Interactions in which commenters joke demonstrate how people’s commenting practices can signify engagement with the issue under discussion, while at the same time triggering social encounters and relation building. When joking in their interactions, commenters rely on inventing stories, decontextualizing and making fun as their typical commenting practices. When inventing stories, people create humorous dialogues or narratives by putting words into the mouths of well-known actors, inventing fictional accounts, telling jokes or describing unrealistic and exaggerated future scenarios or comparisons for the issue under discussion. As stated above, in joking interactions commenters do not necessarily engage in depth with the issue under discussion. Nevertheless, they might make some marginal references to it and by doing so position themselves in the overall discourse. These more superficial refer-
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ences to the issue, then, quite frequently trigger reactions from others. Some of these comments take the form of scenic narratives, as in the following example from Guido Fawkes:
Figure 7.8: Guido Fawkes, 02 July 2012, ‘Cam Expecting Rough EU Ride in Parliament’
In the Guido Fawkes blog no registration is necessary in order to comment. This means that people can select a profile name on a situational basis. As a consequence, many commenters regularly adopt the role of famous politicians in order to make fun of them – in this case of Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, shadow chancellor and leader of the British Labour Party at the time. This example demonstrates how commenters do not have to discuss the issue in great depths in order to position themselves with regard to certain political actors. At the same time, this example also demonstrates how jokes are directed at other people in a commenting space. These two commenters are producing the humorous account together. The second commenter is picking up the joke that the first person started and continues along the same lines. Their coordinated action, therefore, demonstrates why jokes can be categorized as relation-oriented interactions. Although they usually occur in rather short encounters, joking interactions constitute social spaces in online commenting Relation-oriented interactions in online commenting can nevertheless address the issue under discussion. But the ways in which people refer to the issue might diverge from the ways in which providers would like to see it happen. Inventing stories can, for example, be considered the opposite of a fact-based discussion. Nevertheless, people have established it as a typical commenting practice in which they express their opinions. They use humour or sarcasm to express their sentiments about the current situation by describing fictional politi-
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cal aims and statements, insinuations, or comparisons. Reversing one’s own statement within the same comment is a fairly common way of expressing irony in online commenting, as in the following comment from the Financial Times:
Figure 7.9: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘Europe agrees crisis fighting measures’
This commenter sketches out a fictional idea for a possible crisis solution, which he or she turns on its head by voicing derogatory remarks (‘lazy Italians and Spanish’, ‘rip them off directly’). In another example from the Facebook page of Le Monde this method of inversion becomes even clearer. The following commenter gives a fictional sarcastic account of a Greek person buying groceries, despite the fact that he has to pay back his debts:
Figure 7.10: Facebook Le Monde, 24 June 2012, ‘Athènes aurait triché en embauchant des fonctionnaires’ ‘Yesterday, I saw a Greek person buying groceries (sure, he had not eaten for two days, but still...) even though he has to pay his debts! These people have no sense of priority!!! What a shame!!!!’ [Translation by the author]
The above comment received 26 like votes from other page visitors, which is comparably quite a high number - most other comments in this Facebook thread received less than five upvotes. Joking interactions must thus be recognized for their important role in creating social spaces in online commenting. They are a way in which people orient themselves towards others and where they might still position themselves with regard to the issue under discussion. Another commenting practice through which people engage in joking interactions is by decontextualizing the issue under discussion or related actors by
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putting forward specific metaphors concerning the issue under discussion. By choosing common knowledge references that others will understand, commenters implicitly address further potential interaction partners. If they understand the reference, they will recognize what statement the commenter intended to make. For example, commenters may make pop cultural references, such as this comparison of the euro crisis with Star Wars:
Figure 7.11: Facebook Spiegel Online, 29 June 2012, ‘Euro-Krise: Europas Mächtige treten an zum Streit-Gipfel’ ‘“Summit Wars” A European version of George Lucas’ saga “Star Wars”… Darth Angela Merkel against the Euro-Walkers from the rest of the European world…’ [Translation by the author]
Here again it becomes apparent how people do not primarily engage with the issue under discussion, but nevertheless express evaluative statements and positions. Their reliance on metaphors again undermines a nuanced, factual discussion of the issue in the way providers anticipate in their discussion norms. But people can also decontextualize the issue so fundamentally that it no longer refers to the original topic under discussion, as this comment from the Facebook page of Der Standard shows:
Figure 7.12: Facebook Der Standard, 29 June 2012 ‘Not football again ;)’ [Translation by the author]
This commenter pretends to misunderstand the situation. The original post from Der Standard related to the euro crisis, but the commenter puts it in the context
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of the concurrent Euro Cup. Comparable to small talk interactions, decontextualizing as a commenting practice can lead to discussions going completely offtopic. But even when the issue is not discussed, people make an appearance and demonstrate their presence as potential interaction partners. Furthermore, they address others and by doing so create an opportunity for social encounters in their online commenting. When people make fun in their comments, they explicitly refer to other commenters or to actors in the issue context. They make evaluative statements, for example, by mocking people. But even when referring to actors in the issue context, making fun as a commenting practice does not necessarily signify an indepth engagement with the topic under discussion. Instead, it can contribute to establishing spaces where people can voice their unsubstantiated judgments. Usually, they are directed at potential interaction partners and are intended to amuse others and trigger their reactions, as the question in the following comment from Guido Fawkes exemplifies:
Figure 7.13: Guido Fawkes, 02 July 2012, ‘Cam Expecting Rough EU Ride in Parliament’
Making fun works by referring to people’s supposedly negative characteristics and attributes or by imitating them. In this example David Cameron, the British prime minister at the time, is ridiculed based on a photo of him during a morning run that was published alongside a blog post. He is a central actor in the issue that is discussed in the blog post. The comment, however, does not make a statement about the issue, but instead engages in derogatory remarks. Overall jokes as a form of relation-oriented interaction can make explicit or marginal references to the topic under discussion. By inventing stories, by decontextualizing or by making fun, commenters intend to make humorous statements that others might pick up or reciprocate. They constitute online commenting as spaces where people can engage in short social encounters and commonly joke about the issue at hand.
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7.1.3 Disputes Online commenting has become infamous for extremely unpleasant forms of dispute between commenters. Here, the issue under discussion is ignored and instead other commenters become the target of critical or derisive comments. Although disputes are contrary to provider interests, they play a central role in constituting social spaces in online commenting. Disputes and conflicts are therefore a form of interaction through which commenters establish social relations. Max Weber described social relations as situations where actors mutually orient their actions with regard to each other, but where ‘the definition does not specify whether the relation of the actors is co-operative or the opposite’ (Weber 1978: 27). Thus, conflict and hostility constitute a social relation, although due to their conflictual nature this might initially seem counterintuitive. Georg Simmel even took the case of conflict to redefine sociology’s original focus from either the individual or societal unity to the interactions and relations between individuals. If sociology continued to disregard the relations between individuals in society: ‘conflict as such finds no place where it could be studied apart from the contribution that it makes to the forms of immediate unity in society. (…) Now, however, it appears as a comprehensive classification in the theory of relationships of those people who make up a unity, thus distinguishing the socially supportive in the narrower sense from others that work against unity.’ (Simmel 2009: 228) Simmel argues that conflict is constitutive for sociality. It creates and strengthens social relations between people and contributes to producing social order and unity. Although it works against provider interests, it may not be surprising that commenters move from factual discussion towards highly emotional and often irrational forms of communication. Simmel states that the motive behind a conflict is never just about the dispute itself. Instead, two interaction partners or contestants always bring personal and subjective motives into the conflict. As a result, conflict is seldom purely rational (Simmel 2009: 243). The question, then, remains how people express and maintain social relations in their conflicts and produce social spaces when commenting online.
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Disputes differ in their severity – that is in their degree of incivility, insult and harassment of others. They have the tendency to result in conflict, hence in severe cases are fundamentally against provider interests. Accordingly, the inscriptions in the majority of interfaces in this sample explicitly spell out that specific forms of dispute and conflict are not acceptable commenting behaviour and will be moderated. Providers thus actively try to counteract dispute in comments, especially when it targets other commenters personally, rather than their comments. Nevertheless, people engage in disputes by criticising, insulting or backbiting. These commenting practices again demonstrate that people can enact the commenting interfaces in alternative ways than anticipated and expected by their providers. Comments in which people criticise each other are a relatively mild form of dispute. As a commenting practice it can be identified when people direct negative judgments and evaluations at other interaction partners. Their statements necessarily address and refer to other commenters and by doing so contribute towards establishing social spaces in online commenting. Criticism is targeted primarily at the person and not at a person’s argument – even though this line cannot always be drawn very clearly as the following comment demonstrates:
Figure 7.14: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
This comment from Charlemagne shows that there is a fine line between criticising someone’s remarks and criticising the person themselves. This commenter obviously disagrees with a previous comment about the euro crisis. He or she labels its author as ‘silly’ and furthermore accuses them of being racist. When criticising, commenters do not reveal the inaccuracy of a previous comment. Instead, they make evaluative statements on the basis of moral and ethical categories, for example. In this case, a person’s negative judgment con-
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cerning a previous comment refers not to the substance of the comment, but to the person who wrote it. The following comment from the Facebook page of Le Monde exemplifies how a commenter criticises all other commenters and probably also people more generally for blaming each other instead of blaming the financial system as the cause of the euro crisis:
Figure 7.15: Facebook Le Monde, 24 June 2012, ‘Athènes aurait triché en embauchant des fonctionnaires’ ‘We are stigmatizing one another instead of highlighting the cruel failures of the financial system that brings down the people !!!’ [Translation by the author]
When people criticise each other in relation-oriented interactions, they can thus still engage with the issue at hand, but they mostly focus on the perception, attitudes and opinions that they have or form of other commenters. Comments can also contain both – a criticising element in combination with more issue-oriented interactions. In the following example, also from the Facebook page of Le Monde, one commenter is criticised for his or her statements:
Figure 7.16: Facebook Le Monde, 24 June 2012, ‘Athènes aurait triché en embauchant des fonctionnaires’ ‘What is funny, is that I would bet that a guy like [name of commenter] would not flinch when he learns that the governments are bailing out the banks, which caused the financial crisis, with millions and millions of OUR euros. But when the Greeks (who according to the OECD work the most hours per week in Europe) do not obey the troika’s plans, which would lead them into misery and would solve nothing . . . Well, that’s going too far! (. . .)’ [Translation by the author]
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This commenter attributes blame for the euro crisis to the Troika instead of the Greek people – an opinion that obviously seems to contradict what a previous commenter published. The commenter makes insinuations about this other person and disapproves of his or her stance on the issue. At the same time, the commenter equally explains with a few details why he or she finds the other statement weak. This example therefore demonstrates how issue- as well as relation-oriented commenting practices can exist side by side. Furthermore, it demonstrates that commenters must necessarily interact with others and create social encounters in order to criticize them. Compared with criticising as a commenting practice, insulting contradicts provider interests even more fundamentally. As has been demonstrated, criticism can still be based on previous engagement with the issue, and people usually explain why they are criticising others. Commenters who insult other commenters, on the contrary, often make no reference to the issue at all. Compared with criticism, insults are characterized by their harsh language and derogative terms – which can again differ significantly in severity. Commenters can simply discredit others by calling them names or they can delegitimize their statements, as in the following exchange from The Guardian:
Figure 7.17: The Guardian, 25 June 2012, ‘Cyprus seeks Eurozone bailout’
This example shows a very mild form of insult. But people can also harass each other quite severely, which while entirely counter to the discussion and community norms that providers inscribe into their interfaces, has become established as
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a very typical commenting practice. On the one hand, the fact that insults have been established as a commenting practice demonstrates people’s relative autonomy when appropriating commenting interfaces against provider interests, while at the same time demonstrating the limits of that autonomy. In the case of severe forms of hostility, providers step in by moderating comments. In other words, they limit very restrictively how far people can diverge from their anticipations:
Figure 7.18: Guido Fawkes, 01 July 2012, ‘Read Guido in the Daily Star Sunday’
In most comment forums within this sample, the first comment would have been deleted due its extreme language. Furthermore, the example demonstrates that people anticipate the deletion of their comments and deliberately misspell certain swearwords so that they are not detected by moderating software. Although insulting as a commenting practice contradicts provider interests, it nevertheless produces social spaces in online commenting. People necessarily depend on directly interacting with others – often through addressing them explicitly by name as the following comment exemplifies:
Figure 7.19: Facebook Bild, 30 June 2012, ‘Teil-Niederlage beim EU-Gipfel: Merkel spaltet Europa’ ‘[Name of commenter] shut your face, all that comes out of it is shit. You have the IQ of an amoeba!’ [Translation by the author]
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Insults often even occur in recurring and longer interactions between the same commenters. They often react to insults or derogatory remarks with additional confrontational statements. These continuing interactions thus mirror Weber’s and Simmel’s explicit and initially counter-intuitive inclusion of conflict as a form of social relation. Backbiting as a commenting practice signifies that commenters speak derisively about others. It requires, on the one hand, that people mutually orient their actions within the group that demonstrates a shared dislike of another commenter. By making derisive remarks, they are, on the other hand, also expressing a relation with the targeted person. The following interaction thread from Charlemagne demonstrates the continuous interaction of the same group of commenters and their mutual orientation when engaging in longer disputes. Two commenters make derisive remarks about another person without directly addressing him or her. The targeted person is of course indirectly addressed and will be notified about their comments, as they are posted as direct responses to his or her previous comment:
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Figure 7.20: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
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Backbiting in disputes can thus lead to more extended social encounters. It substantiates further the constitution of social spaces in online commenting. This is especially the case because backbiting usually relies on two or more people showing solidarity in their mutual disapproval of others. By showing solidarity on the one side and disapproval on the other, commenters even build up what could be labelled as discussion camps – especially in longer interactions over multiple comments. Two camps of commenters, then, position themselves in opposition to each other, expressing strong ties of commonality within their respective groups, while distinguishing themselves from the other group. Conflict thus strengthens social relations in two ways. The social spaces of online commenting are not only based on fleeting encounters without long-term consequences. Rather, people often establish a position that is recognized and known to others and which furthermore becomes the basis for their ongoing relation.
7.1.4 Reprimands The underlying assumptions of this interaction analysis are that people establish typical commenting practices and a specific interaction order when commenting online. As a consequence, each commenter is requested to abide by certain implicit commenting rules. Occasionally, commenters will articulate such specific commenting rules concerning what they consider appropriate commenting practices. Within reprimanding interactions, commenters explicate how people should comment, how they should orient their actions toward others or the issue under discussion. Reprimands, therefore, work through articulating commenting rules, especially when people consider someone else to have violated them. They are by definition directed at other commenters and as such create social encounters between interactants. Furthermore, they strengthen the constitution of social spaces in people’s online commenting because they demonstrate how the interaction order is commonly negotiated. While providers try to set a general framework for an interaction order by inscribing their specific interests into the commenting interfaces, people equally contribute towards establishing appropriate commenting practices. When commenters articulate commenting rules, they spell out what specific tone and mode of commenting people will consider typical in a respective com-
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menting space. As mentioned above, this often happens when they consider another person engaged in inappropriate commenting behaviour or when people openly ask questions about specific commenting rules. In the following comment from FS Misik one person, for instance, complains about the down-voting habits of other commenters:
Figure 7.21: FS Misik, 01 July 2012, ‘Angela Merkel – Die gefährlichste Frau der Welt?’ ‘I do like red bars (they often confirm), and also the quick ones, but there seems to be a staunch red barrer who redbars faster than his shadow. Bravo, a splendid argumentative performance.’ [Translation by the author]
The commenter does not necessarily perceive a violation of commenting rules, but at least considers another person’s behaviour as questionable. Commenters occasionally question other people’s ways of commenting. These articulations concerning commenting rules usually only occur in single responses to a previous comment, and generally do not trigger longer interactions in which commenting rules would be negotiated and discussed. Consequently, such articulations mostly serve the purpose of re-instantiating already established commenting rules and to make oneself and others aware of them. Next to admonishing specific violations of commenting rules, some commenters also voice general reprimands concerning the commenting practices and overall tonality in a commenting space, as this example from the Facebook page of Spiegel Online demonstrates:
Figure 7.22: Facebook Spiegel Online, 25 June 2012, ‘Europa: “Perfekte Lösungen brauchen lange”’ ‘It’s not new that the BILD standard has been established in the Spiegel Online forum… people are only swearing instead of reasoning ;-)’ [Translation by the author]
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Such general criticism regarding the quality of other people’s comments are quite common across this sample. On the one hand, they point to disagreement between commenters on what can be considered appropriate commenting practices. On the other, they also provide opportunities for commenters to explicitly spell out what kinds of commenting they would like others to engage in. Overall, these general reprimands thus reflect how people commonly set the tone for online commenting in a given comment forum.
7.2
Issue spaces of online commenting
The interface analysis has previously demonstrated that providers inscribe norms and guidelines in their interfaces concerning how people should be discussing the issue at hand. Commenters are relatively autonomous in deciding whether to abide by these norms when commenting online. The first results of the interaction analysis already show that not all commenting practices relate to the issue under discussion. Instead, commenters are often concerned with articulating relations with each other by constituting social spaces in their online commenting. However, commenters also engage in issue-oriented interactions in which they make use of many diverse commenting practices to explicitly relate to the issue at hand. But it remains to be answered whether these issue-oriented interactions are in accordance with the anticipations and expectations that provider inscribe into their interfaces. As an inductive approach, this interaction analysis does not limit itself to provider ideas concerning how people should comment on an issue, or to normative assumptions stemming from different models of democratic participation or civic engagement. Instead, it provides insights into the diversity and range of people’s commenting practices when setting the tone for how civic issues are discussed in online commenting. In the following, I analyse accordingly how people create issue spaces in their online commenting. Again relying on Watzlawick’s notion that communication always has a content as well as relational dimension (Watzlawick et al. 1967: 33), online commenting cannot be seen as constituting either social or issue spaces. Within issue-oriented interactions commenters concentrate more on the issue under discussion as the primary content of their communication and not explicitly on their relational aspects. The content of people’s comments refers in
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the widest sense to the issue that is presented in the primary input – in this study the reporting on the euro crisis within news articles, blog posts or social networking site posts. In their issue-oriented interactions, comments focus on the euro crisis through demarcations, interpretations or discussions.
7.2.1 Demarcations While the issue at hand is usually presented in detail within the original news media article or blog post, commenters generally make explicit what they understand the issue to entail. In other words, people demarcate the issue in their comments by formulating specific narratives as the starting points from which further interactions about the issue might evolve. Demarcating the issue is initially a purely descriptive endeavour. People do so by referencing, summarizing and informing, attributing responsibility and evaluating in their comments. This is not usually an aspect that providers of commenting interfaces articulate as a guideline for people’s commenting. But as it implies a strong orientation towards the issue under discussion, demarcations are probably not considered problematic from a provider perspective. In any case, they do not specifically contradict provider inscriptions, but in one aspect even align with provider interests and anticipations. When commenters demarcate issue narratives, they often base their accounts on additional information and explicitly aim to provide an alternative point of view. Most providers encourage exactly this kind of behaviour: they want people to contribute new information, new perspectives and facts to their own reporting. Referencing the original article or blog post occurs quite frequently within issueoriented interactions. Its regularity as a commenting practice demonstrates that people often follow more or less what has been discussed in the primary input. Commenters can either narrowly follow what has been reported or they can broaden the context. When they quote specific paragraphs from the primary text and continue with their own narrative of the issue, they clearly follow the line provided. For example, this commenter quotes directly from the original article and also refers to the article’s headline ‘Europe on the rack’ as a starting point from which to present his or her perspective on the crisis situation:
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Figure 7.23: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
Other commenters seem to deliberatively diverge from the specific focus of the original article in favour of setting their own focus on the issue, while still making explicit references to the general issue. In the following comment, one person reacts to the same article as the comment above, using a number of keywords that are representative of the general discourse on the euro crisis:
Figure 7.24: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
This commenter makes no specific reference to the Charlemagne article, but nevertheless refers explicitly to the euro crisis and does not diverge from the topic that is established in the primary input. Hence referencing as a commenting
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practice allows people to establish issue spaces in online commenting that follow more or less closely the input that journalists or bloggers predefine. In order to demarcate a certain topic as the issue under discussion people rely to a large extent on summarizing and informing as a commenting practice. In their summaries, commenters single out what they consider the issue to be. As this analysis deals with a political crisis, such summaries often describe the underlying problems of the current situation, as in the comment below:
Figure 7.25: Financial Times, 26 June 2012, ‘EU plan to rewrite eurozone budgets’
This commenter in the Financial Times provides a comprehensive list of issues and political mismanagement that ‘should actually be discussed and fixed’ in the crisis context. In doing so, he or she provides specific starting points for further discussions on the euro crisis. People who summarize the status quo thus offer narratives of the issue that can become the basis on which other commenters further interact with each other. People’s summarizing demarcations of the issue can either trigger disagreement or approval. The following exchange demonstrates how two commenters support each other in their perception of the issue. Furthermore, it demonstrates that people rely on information beyond that presented in the primary input when they put forward their respective narrative of the issue. They might quote information without providing specific sources, as in the following comment on Spiegel Online:
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Figure 7.26: Spiegel Online, 25 June 2012, ‘Alle Hoffnungen ruhen auf dem Plan der Vier’ First commenter: ‘There is nothing to reform there. Interestingly, the Greeks again want to pay their unemployed 24 months of unemployment benefits, while with us they stop after 12 months.’ Second commenter: ‘Absolutely true! For more than 100 years people have tried to reform this country. They have pumped billions and billions into the country – but it has never resulted in anything. Why would it, if you can live splendidly with such an attitude and there are always some dummies who pay for all of it. 2000 euro pensions after taxes after 30 years as a worker (not as an engineer, top manager or anything like that) for the Greek state – how wonderful – and all that without paying taxes. We Germans can only dream of that.’ [Translation by the author]
But many commenters also refer to other articles, blogs posts, statistical data or governmental information to provide more information and strengthen their claims. Others summarize previous developments in the wider issue context in order to explain the current situation, like the following commenter in the Charlemagne forum does:
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Figure 7.27: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
This commenter depicts the cuts that the Greek people have had to endure and the ineffectiveness of the political attempts to resolve the euro crisis. Particularly during significant events which are in the process of unfolding, commenters provide the latest information in real-time. During the so-called crisis summit in June 2012, some commenters in the Financial Times contributed current information on the latest market developments as soon as the summit had ended in Brussels. Summarizing and informing as commenting practices thus demonstrate how commenters describe their perspectives on the issue at hand. They set the tone for online commenting as issue spaces where people try to reach a better understanding of the situation. Thus it is not only the news article or blog post that demarcates the issue. On the contrary, commenters establish their own focus and offer their subjective narratives of the crisis and thereby contribute to constituting commenting spaces where the issue is discussed from manifold perspectives. Another way through which commenters demarcate issue narratives is by attributing responsibility, in other words by establishing who is to blame for the crisis or who should resolve it. Such attributions are necessarily actor-focused in that they need to be attributed to someone. By identifying and nominating actors in the issue context, commenters again contribute to establishing certain narratives of the issue under discussion to justify blaming politicians, institutions or abstract groups of people. The following comment from the German blog Spie-
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gelfechter, for instance, ascribes responsibility for past and future mismanagement to the European institutions:
Figure 7.28: Spiegelfechter, 28 June 2012, ‘Demokratie, Austerität und die zwei Europas’ ‘Europe in line with the market? Neoliberal austerity politics? Excuse me? Quite astonishing how differently one can perceive reality. Europe is a heap of dysfunctional regulations with at times bizarre interventions in the market, which often create the problems that politicians cannot resolve afterwards. People often like to forget how regulated the banking industry already is and just how little the extensive supervisory authorities have achieved. Nevertheless, people now misguidedly demand more supervision – more of the same will be able to bring about the solution! […]’ [Translation by the author]
This example shows how commenters engage in depth with the issue under discussion when attributing responsibility. They try to understand what has caused the issue or how the situation could be resolved. As most providers desire in their discussion norms, commenters provide different perspectives on the issue. Furthermore, the above comment demonstrates how two commenters can demarcate fundamentally different narratives of the situation. The commenter in the example from Der Spiegelfechter points out that he or she perceives the situation in a completely different way than a previous commenter (‘Quite astonishing how differently one can perceive reality’). On the question of who is to blame for the crisis, people often attribute responsibility to different actors. The following comment, for instance, demonstrates how one person disagrees with another over who is to blame for the situation. In the context of the euro crisis, this often means blaming abstract actors like entire countries. Their disagreement over who is responsible for the crisis exemplifies how people establish typical commenting practices through which they demarcate the issue in very different ways:
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Figure 7.29: Facebook The Economist, 27 June 2012, ‘Angela's vision’
This analysis identifies evaluating as another frequent commenting practice through which people demarcate the issue under discussion. Commenters evaluate the overall development of the issue and its specific actors. They do not demarcate detailed narratives, but rather engage in brief expressions of opinions and value judgments concerning narratives previously put forward. Commenters thus do not engage with the euro crisis in detail, but rather position themselves generally within the overall discourse. Furthermore, such evaluations usually do not occur in response to other commenters, nor do evaluating comments generally trigger further interactions. In the following example, a commenter for instance shortly praises the recent results of the EU crisis summit:
Figure 7.30: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘Europe agrees crisis-fighting measures’
Discussion norms on the interface often articulate explicitly that providers want people to substantiate their statements with facts and arguments, instead of simply making claims. Short evaluative statements are thus probably not in the primary interest of the providers of commenting interfaces - but they also do not contradict them. In any case, evaluating has become established as a typical commenting practice through which commenters engage with an issue and with each other.
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7.2.2 Interpretations Interpretations as issue-oriented interactions are commenting practices in which commenters present specifically how they have reached certain conclusions, perspectives and opinions. In other words, people deduce, translate and speculate when interpreting the issue under discussion. These commenting practices establish issue spaces in online commenting where people engage in depth with the issue at hand by making their line of thinking transparent for others. Commenters do not present supposed facts or ready-made opinions in order to demarcate the current status quo, but rather establish a tonality in online commenting, which is largely along provider interests. First, interpretations are often formulated as a direct response to the article or blog post. People typically take elements from an article and form an opinion about it step-by-step. Second, they also provide opportunities for commenters to mutually engage with the issue in longer chains of interactions. They explain for themselves and others how they reached certain conclusions. In their interactions with others, commenters use interpretative elements to substantiate their argument and to make their line of thinking transparent. They explain where they see causalities between events in the issue context, what they understand certain political statements to mean and how they make sense of the situation. In short, the focus in interpretations lies on the process of reaching an opinion, which provides starting points for others to engage with the issue under discussion. Deducing as a commenting practice corresponds to a great extent with provider interests as inscribed into the commenting interfaces. It exemplifies how people enact the commenting interfaces as issue spaces where people mutually engage with the issue under discussion. By deducing how they have reached a perspective on the issue, commenters make their line of thinking transparent and are describing step-by-step how they see the current situation to have evolved. They establish chains of causality, which they integrate into their reasoning in order to substantiate their perspective on the issue. When deducing developments of the issue, commenters put forward different narratives substantiated through reason and comprehensible arguments. The following comment from Charlemagne, for instance, demonstrates how one comment causally connects certain developments in the issue context and thereby deduces what specific circumstances have triggered a crisis in certain countries:
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Figure 7.31: Charlemagne, 28 June 2012, ‘Europe on the rack’
The author of the above comment deduces causal connections (‘because it sets the conditions…’, ‘It determines…’, ‘That is the reason…’) between possible reasons for why southern European countries ‘are left behind’. Next to such causal connections, commenters also view events chronologically to explain certain developments. Furthermore, the above comment from Charlemagne exemplifies how deducing as a commenting practice triggers people’s mutual engagement with an issue. Making one’s line of thinking transparent provides ample starting points for others to challenge or substantiate certain arguments. The above comment is an example of a response within a longer exchange between several commenters debating why northern European countries do not seem to be as affected by the crisis as southern European countries. Deducing as a commenting practice in longer chains of interaction can, therefore, have an explanatory character, which is why it can be in the interests of providers. The explanatory character of such sequences becomes even more apparent when commenters deduce developments in reaction to another person’s questions:
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Figure 7.32: The Guardian, 25 June 2012, ‘Cyprus seeks eurozone bailout’
These two comments are an extract from a much longer chain of interactions, where the first person repeatedly questions the explanations that are provided in response to the original post. He or she does so by providing alternative explanations and causal arguments, which contradict the explanations he or she receives. Overall, deducing as a commenting practice easily triggers dissent and contradiction, but also support and substantiation from others. It often occurs in quite long exchanges between relatively high numbers of commenters. To that extent, it corresponds to what the providers of commenting interfaces often would like their comments to be: factual, explanatory, constructive, interactive and issue-oriented. Lengthy interactions between commenters are not, however, a precondition for interpretations as issue-oriented interactions. When commenters hear about new developments within the news media reporting, they often pick up certain aspects and try to establish what they really mean. In other words, they translate what they have just read:
Figure 7.33: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘Europe agrees crisis-fighting measures’
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The author of the above comment, for example, refers to the Financial Time’s reporting on the outcomes of the EU crisis summit. The commenter describes what he or she thinks the newly agreed regulation actually means. By translating, people constitute issue spaces in online commenting in which they try to make sense of the issue in direct relation to the news reporting about it. Translating as a commenting practice produces specific perspectives on the issue under discussion that often express a strong political opinion. In the following comment from Spiegel Online, for example, someone quotes directly from a news media article that also covered the results of the EU summit. The commenter asserts that the agreed banking union will ultimately result in Germany’s liability for all European banks:
Figure 7.34: Spiegel Online, 25 June 2012, ‘Alle Hoffnungen ruhen auf dem Plan der Vier’ ‘“a banking union with a shared deposit guarantee fund. This is supposed to guarantee mutual support. Later on a banking levy could be added. Furthermore, a new supervisory authority at the European central bank is supposed to oversee all financial institutions.” = shared liabilities of all Euro banks = state liability for the Euro banks = Germany’s liability for all European banks’ [Translation by the author]
Translating as a commenting practice often occurs in reaction to ongoing developments. When new information about the issue becomes public, people try to make sense of what these new developments mean. As the previous comment has shown, this includes integrating new information into the existing perception of the issue. Another practice through which people make sense of the issue at hand is by speculating about potential motives that actors in the situation might follow or about possible consequences that might result from current developments by producing probable narratives of the issue. Due to their speculative character,
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these commenters are open to challenges from others and often trigger further reactions and discussions. Hence speculating produces commenting spaces where commenters often mutually engage with the issue at hand. When speculating, commenters put forward assumptions about possible motives that political actors might follow in their handling of the issue, as the following example from Der Standard demonstrates:
Figure 7.35: FS Misik, 02 July 2012, ‘Angela Merkel – Die gefährlichste Frau der Welt?’ ‘I think people here are exaggerating a bit… What Merkel is doing is exactly why she was elected, she is representing Germany’s interests, or more precisely the German industry’s interests. However, it is not in Germany’s interests that the southern countries do not take on debts, because one person’s debts are another person’s profits. But stability in the euro zone is equally not in Germany’s interests, the last thing that the export champion Germany wants is a stable Euro that suddenly would have the value that it deserves and that would damage exports. That is why Merkel always gives in a little, approves a little here and a little there, but like a good girl always makes sure that there won’t be too much stability.’ [Translation by the author]
This commenter explains in detail the interests that Angela Merkel and Germany supposedly follow during the euro crisis. He or she speculates on certain motives behind Merkel’s actions to explain her handling of the situation. This commenter makes sense of current and past developments. But commenters also speculate about future developments, in which they often diverge to a greater extent from the original reporting. As the following comment from the Financial Times demonstrates, people regularly make sense of the issue by wondering about future developments and long-term consequences:
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Figure 7.36: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘Europe agrees crisis-fighting measures’
Whereas translating as a commenting practice relies much more on presenting specific narratives of current developments as facts and actual developments, speculating rather presents likely projections and implications within the overall context. But deducing, translating and speculating all establish issue-oriented commenting spaces in which people either individually or collectively make sense of the issue under discussion.
7.2.3 Discussions The third way in which online commenting constitutes issue spaces is through discussions as issue-oriented interactions. In discussions commenters enact the issue spaces of online commenting both by engaging with the issue at hand as well as by engaging with other commenters and their perspectives. The typical commenting practices that constitute discussions as issue-oriented interactions therefore allow people to interact across multiple comments. By positioning as well as by supporting and contradicting commenters engage in shared discussions. Compared with demarcations and interpretations, the other two issue-oriented interactions, discussions do not rely as much on a close correspondence to the primary input, but rather on commenters referring to each other. Despite this mutual engagement, discussions establish a tone in online commenting that is still mostly issue-oriented. Hence discussions correspond with the normative guidelines that providers across the interfaces in this sample articulated for commenting. They articulate explicitly that commenters should engage with each other’s arguments. While doing so, commenters still articulate
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relations towards each other. But these relations are primarily expressed through people’s shared focus on the topic at hand. Discussions depend on people reacting to each other’s comments. In this context, positioning as a commenting practice allows people to articulate a point of view that others will react to. Commenters positions themselves by making a personal statement with regard to the overall discourse or with reference to positions already articulated by other commenters. Articulating a position, then, becomes the basis for mutual engagement with the issue under discussion. The following example from Libération shows how one person reacts to the content of the original news article as well as to other comments. He or she specifically positions him- or herself against another commenter and thus also against the policies of François Hollande, the French president at the time:
Figure 7.37: Libération, 28 June 2012, ‘“Les choses vont bien entre Français et Allemands”, assure Cazeneuve’ ‘Hollande sees things in just as one-sided a perspective as [the other commenter]. The choice is not between “restrictive fiscal policy with recession” or “recovery through bonds without restrictive fiscal policy”. If things were that simple everyone in Europe would choose the second solution. No, for every country in the Eurozone to get going again, we need: public financing without deficit and business competitiveness so that they can win back their customers and start employing people again. For that, there is no other choice than to take the path that Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and others took. The recovery does not depend on Eurobonds, but on the politics of austerity and structural reforms.’ [Translation by the author]
But this commenter is not only reacting to another person’s assessment of the issue. He or she, furthermore, makes a concrete personal statement on the issue and offers an alternative solution to the crisis. By positioning themselves, com-
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menters usually provide their opinion on the issue, which might then become the basis for a continuing exchange across multiple comments. As in the example above, in the context of the euro crisis, positioning often relates to finding solutions to the crisis. Commenters therefore engage with the issue by contributing specific solution-focused crisis narratives. By providing their own perspective, commenters accord with the interface inscriptions in this analysis. Many providers explicitly encourage people to contribute their own perspective on the issue at hand, which could be very specific and detailed perspectives as in the comment above. But others propose more general projections for the future, as in the following comment from the Financial Times:
Figure 7.38: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘Europe agrees crisis-fighting measures’
This commenter sees a more strongly united Europe as an opposing force against China and the US as the best way out of the crisis. He or she does not provide any concrete solutions, but rather advocates a political vision for Europe. A discussion based on subjective statements concerning the crisis is often at the same time a discussion of its causes. Therefore, comments in which people position themselves vis-à-vis the current situation in many cases also make use of other commenting practices. For instance, they might substantiate their statements by deducing through causal connections why their proposed solution for the crisis would lead to the desired results. Positions can thus trigger a chain of comment responses in which people repeatedly clarify their own position, attribute responsibility, deduce causes of the crisis and thereby position themselves within the overall crisis discourse and with regard to each other. When people do not put forward their own perspective on the issue, they may either support or contradict another person’s statement. These two commenting practices describe two sides of the same coin. They exemplify how commenters position themselves not within the overall discourse on the crisis but
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with regard to each other. When supporting another commenter, they uphold their line of thought, while in contradicting another commenter, they describe why they disagree. In some cases, people’s reactions might even lead to the formation of discussion camps, with supporters of one perspective on one side and their opponents on the other. Supporting and contradicting as commenting practices therefore produce commenting spaces in which commenters engage with the issue at hand through their reactions towards each other. But they are, nevertheless, different to simply approving and disapproving statements as described in chapter 7.1.1. When supporting or contradicting another perspective, commenters always add new arguments to the discussion. As the comment below from Der Standard demonstrates, people can express their agreement by repeating or providing further arguments along a previously articulated line of thought:
Figure 7.39: Der Standard, 25 June 2012, ‘Europa ohne Euro wäre massiver Rückschritt’ First commenter: ‘new loans only in connection with binding conditions. With Greece as the prime example you can clearly see how “binding” these conditions really are.’ Second commenter: ‘And printing money on the scale of hundreds of billions? There can hardly be anything less binding! In the long term the Germans will realize that one cannot cover the gigantic financial requirements of the debtor nations by printing money without endangering the value of the currency that they hold so dear. Then they will cop out again, and do the unavoidable by agreeing to euro bonds. As usual, they will have done too little too late! What a terrible performance!’ [Translation by the author]
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The second comment in this example takes the same starting point as the previous comment. By doing so, the commenter implicitly supports and acknowledges the previously laid out train of thought. However, differences in people’s opinions seem to trigger more and longer interactions than supportive statements. When contradicting what someone else has stated, commenters often correct the other, lecture them or offer counter arguments. Such comments can differ in their degree of contradiction. Some commenters will partly agree with another person’s statements, but might see slight differences, for instance, concerning the causes of the crisis. Other commenters completely disagree with previous comments. In the following example from Spiegelfechter one person denies the legitimacy of another comment. This commenter differs fundamentally in his or her perception of the situation:
Figure 7.40: Spiegelfechter, 29 June 2012, ‘Demokratie, Austerität und die zwei Europas’ ‘Really? That’s how it is? Why did the financial and banking crisis even happen when everything was so well regulated? Fact is that especially within the financial market there have been massive deregulations since the 90s. The opposite of what you’re saying is true.’ [Translation by the author]
Contradicting statements occur across the comment forums in this sample. But they differ in their severity. Some comment forums tend to allow more drastic language, insults and ridicule. Discussions as issue-oriented interactions might, then, lean towards moving completely into relation-oriented interactions in which commenters will only target each other rather than each other’s statements. In that case, people no longer contribute to producing different accounts of the issue, but are mostly concerned with expressing their opposing relation with regard to each other. Discussions as issue-oriented interactions thus demonstrate how the relation and content aspects in people’s comments can overlap. Furthermore, it makes visible how easily the dominant focus in an issue-oriented interaction can shift to its relational aspects. Such a change in tonality might,
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then, counteract the discussion norms that the providers of commenting interfaces would like commenters to engage in.
7.3
Civic communication in commenting practices
The analysis of the different commenting practices that people engage in across the comment forums in this sample has demonstrated that people create social as well as issue spaces in their online commenting. Accordingly, commenters set a tone for online commenting that on the one hand allows for a focused engagement with the issue under discussion within issue-oriented interactions in the way most providers inscribe into their commenting interfaces. On the other hand, it is equally common for people to engage in commenting practices that do not or only nominally relate to the issue under discussion or that do not delve very deeply into the details of the issue. Instead, by appearing and presenting themselves as potential interaction partners, by implicitly and explicitly addressing other commenters and by commonly negotiating commenting rules people first create situations of immediate presence, which in other interactional settings would be a given. Compared with other contexts of civic talk, when commenting online people thus rely on relation-oriented commenting practices in order to create a foundation on which social encounters can unfold. At some point, these social encounters might also turn to discussing a civic or political issue. Interactions in which people make jokes – for instance about politicians in the crisis context – demonstrate how the line between discussions that engages with a political or civic issue cannot always be drawn very clearly. Again, it must be stressed that commenters in their issue-oriented commenting practices create situations of immediate presence and thus constitute social encounters. The differentiation into the social and issue spaces of online commenting merely highlights that not all of people’s comments can necessarily be considered civic talk in that it does not engage with the civic or political. Some interactions, although they might be carried out in the quasi-public setting of an online comment forum, rather resemble forms of talk in the private sphere. Nevertheless, these forms of talk should be acknowledged for their role in communicatively creating the contexts in which social interactions can unfold even
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though they do not at a given moment contribute directly to people’s civic online agency. Although providers often neglect the social spaces of online commenting in their interface inscriptions, the analysis of commenting practices has not only demonstrated how manifold and central relation-oriented interactions are. It has also indicated how social and issue spaces in online commenting are interdependent. On a structural level the analysis thus depicts how online commenting constitutes spaces where people communicate about civic issues and where they engage in social encounters as well as constitute relations with each other at the same time. In other words, civic communication on an issue in online commenting takes place when people engage in social encounters. While this observation might appear marginal, it needs stressing when the relation-oriented commenting practices that people engage in are neither prominently acknowledged by the providers of commenting interfaces nor by different models of civic online engagement. With regard to the overall research question, the analysis of people’s commenting practices has focused on the agency side within the socio-technical constitution of online commenting. But in doing so, it aims to move beyond attempts to simply describe and differentiate online commenting, as for example approaches to the analysis of digital media genres do (Jensen 2011: 8; Lomborg 2011: 57; Lüders et al. 2010: 953). They conceptualize genre as: ‘a certain “horizon of expectations” that manifests itself as a set of textual conventions, guiding media producers and recipients towards alignment and mutual understanding in the communicative process’ (Lomborg 2014: 3) In that sense, online commenting can equally be described as a digital media genre that is constituted through the diverse commenting practices that I have identified. But by relying on de Certeau’s notion of space (cf. chapter 4.3), I furthermore interrogate the power relations between providers and commenters when establishing online commenting in a specific form at the potentially contentious interrelation of commenting interfaces and commenting practices. The above analysis, then, also investigated the extent to which people can establish commenting practices irrespective of the strong normative interests that provid-
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ers might seek to impose. Where people’s issue-oriented interactions can be considered as predominantly along the lines of what providers have inscribed into their interfaces, relation-oriented interactions do not necessarily correspond with provider interests. In some cases, relation-oriented interactions with their respective commenting practices are facilitated by certain interface functions, for example by enabling commenters to articulate short responses through feedback buttons. In other cases, people’s relation-oriented commenting practices are neither explicitly called for nor prohibited by the provider. But in some cases, they are explicitly contrary to provider inscriptions. When relation-oriented commenting practices are not acknowledged by or even work against provider interests, the question remains how far they can nevertheless be considered relevant for people’s civic communication in online commenting. The value of an inductive approach to people’s media practices, then, lies in demonstrating how commenting practices become relevant as a form of civic communication that initially might seem marginal and may be neglected. The above discussion on the social spaces of online commenting has demonstrated how civic communication in online commenting does not only depend on strictly issue-oriented interactions and commenting practices. Despite the fact that news workers, the interface inscriptions in this analysis or different models of civic online communication do not foreground relation-oriented interactions and commenting practices, they are nonetheless relevant for online commenting as a form of civic communication. In order to demonstrate how both relation- as well as issue-oriented commenting practices constitute people’s civic online communication, in the following chapter I address how people mix and match the typical commenting practices identified above in their interactions. With the analysis remaining on a structural level, I describe how people communicatively construct the political or civic issue they are discussing in their evolving comment interactions through both relation- as well as issue-oriented interactions.
8
Meaning within interactions: Constructing the issue in online commenting
In this chapter I introduce the notion of interaction roles in order to differentiate the diverse ways in which people construct political and civic issues in their evolving comment interactions. The two previous empirical chapters focused on either the technology or the agency side of online commenting. The interface analysis depicted how commenting interfaces constitute pre-configured settings for people’s commenting practices, whereas the interaction analysis identified the typical commenting practices that people engage in. But commenters do not only engage in one set of commenting practices within one comment or one commenting thread. Instead they mix and match practices within the same comment or move from one type of interaction to another across multiple comments. In this context the notion of interaction roles describes the structural components behind the different ways in which people interact with each other in shorter or longer comment threads. Such a structural analysis will provide insights into the typical ways in which people construct the euro crisis as a political and civic issue in their comment interactions. Ultimately, the analysis of interaction roles allows for an assessment of online commenting as a form of civic communication. I introduce interaction roles to describe how commenters adopt certain roles when engaging in social encounters with other actors in their comment interactions. Erving Goffman explicitly mentioned interaction roles as a means of describing ‘recurrent interaction processes of some generality’ (Goffman 1983: 7). As habitualized collective accomplishments the commenting practices that I identified in the previous chapter represent such general recurrent elements of people’s commenting interactions. But as discussed previously, these practices are only the individual building blocks that people make use of in their online commenting. Individual comments as well as longer interactions across multiple comments usually combine more than one commenting practice. The notion of © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 A. Mollen, Digital Spaces of Civic Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0_8
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interaction roles enables us to grasp the structural patterns in which commenters combine varied commenting practices in their interactions. In contrast to social roles, on which Goffman mostly concentrated in his studies, it highlights an actor-centred perspective on the interactional structures in online commenting, it describes their situational character and their context-sensitivity. The actor-centred perspective of interaction roles allows for an investigation into how people across several individual interactional situations rely on structural elements in their online commenting. Each individual actor, then, becomes the enactor of objectively recognized forms of action (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 90). Furthermore, it reflects the fact that people adopt different interaction roles when commenting online, which is why interaction roles are situational. People are not statically bound to one role in their comment interactions. Instead, the notion of roles describes ‘a situated activity system’ (Goffman 1972:84-88) which provides orientation for actors in an interactional encounter. This activity system provides a perspective on ‘the individual in terms of the conception he and others have of him’ (Goffman 1972: 117). Or as Berger and Luckmann formulate, enacting a role determines an actor’s self-apprehension in that particular moment (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 90). In other words, commenters are recognized in the roles they adopt in a given situation. At the same time, they can shift and switch between interaction roles within the same comment thread and occasionally even within the same comment. Lastly, interaction roles are context-sensitive. They cannot be generalized across different interactional encounters. The interaction roles analysed in this study are specific to comment interactions about political and civic issues. But in their contextsensitivity they provide more insights than the dyadic structure of the ‘primitive notions of speaker and hearer’ (Goffman 1981: 128). Goffman criticized this simple dichotomy and sought to introduce more nuanced ways of distinguishing the roles that people adopt in their interactions. Although this implies limits to the generalizability of the analysis, it allows me to assess how commenting constitutes a form of civic online communication. As this analysis will demonstrate, each interaction role can be distinguished based on three different structural elements found in commenting: as already mentioned the typical commenting practices in an interaction, the typical phases of an interaction as well as the typical courses of an interaction. By focusing on the general structures of comment interactions, I follow a well-established line of
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research into social interactions, such as within ethnomethodological research (Garfinkel 1967), micro-sociological approaches within studies of social interactions and social encounters (Goffman 1972), in the sociology of knowledge (Luckmann 1979, 1986) or in German socio-linguistic approaches to communicative genres (Bergmann 1987; Keppler 1994; Knoblauch and Günthner 1995). To different degrees, these approaches build on socio-linguistic methods and more heavily on conversation analysis (CA) in order to assess how social order is constituted on the micro-level of everyday interactions (Sacks et al. 1974: 698700). That is why: ‘The analysis of roles is of particular importance to the sociology of knowledge because it reveals the mediations between the macroscopic universes of meaning objectivated in a society and the ways by which these universes are subjectively real to individuals.’ (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 96) By connecting the analysis of interaction roles and people’s ways of constructing the euro crisis as a political and civic issue in their comment interactions, I rely on the concept of objectivations as formulated within social and communicative constructivist approaches (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 76-79). Based on Schütz, communicative constructivism argues that intersubjectivity can only be achieved in encounters with other actors for which communication and consequently objectivations are central (Knoblauch 2013a; b: 27). The idea of objectivation addresses how a presumably objective reality can be constructed that appears as a given to members of a society even though people’s sense-making and agency is grounded in subjective experiences. Accordingly, ‘[o]bjectivations are obviously designed as an interface between the subjectivity of intentions and actions and the objectivity of social reality.’ (Knoblauch 2013a: 300) Language represents such an objectivation: it is enacted and produced within people’s everyday agency, but appears as a naturally given institutionalisation independent of any subjective experiences (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 77). Objectivations, therefore, depend on certain practices becoming typical for a given situation. They contribute to establishing a framework within which individuals can orient their experiences and actions (Luckmann 1986: 199). Thus, objectivations are central for people’s mutual understanding in any social encounter and any communicative
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interaction. Accordingly, I analyse how people’s interactions rely on roles that become constituted ‘when this kind of typification occurs in the context of an objectified stock of knowledge common to a collectivity of actors’ (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 91). The analysis thus necessarily focuses on identifying typicality and habitualization in people’s communication or in other words on recognizing communicative forms: ‘Communicative forms are the major “building blocks” for the construction of reality in that they allow us to coordinate actions and motives. Communicative forms are not only produced by communicative actions. Due to their objectivated character, they also serve as a means to produce order and to orientate action on different scales toward varied goals.’ (Knoblauch 2013a: 306) By analysing interaction roles within comment interactions as structural expressions of such objectivations, I can, then, demonstrate how adopting a certain interaction role goes hand in hand with constructing the euro crisis as the issue under discussion in a specific way. Beyond this narrow perspective, I can ultimately also evaluate how online commenting constitutes forms of civic online communication. Based on the typical practices, courses and phases in people’s comment interactions, I identified eight interaction roles, which again can be differentiated into three different ways of constructing the euro crisis as a political and civic issue: monological constructions within single comment threads, coconstructions within longer interaction threads and incompatible constructions within failing interactions. Differentiating interaction roles for each of the three ways in which interactions evolve in this analysis allows for nuanced insights into how the euro crisis is communicatively constructed. In the following, I first briefly describe how monological constructions, coconstructions and incompatible constructions can be distinguished based on structural differences in the typical phases, courses and practices in an interaction. The focus will subsequently lie on the different interaction roles that people adopt in their comment interaction and their specific ways of constructing the euro crisis as the issue under discussion. The analysis will show that even when people engage in commenting practices that work directly against provide interests, they nevertheless uphold interactions and continue to construct the euro
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crisis as a political and civic issue. The analysis will, therefore, demonstrate that the common assumption that a political crisis will lead to a communicative crisis is not accurate – not even for the frequently problematic spaces of online commenting Table 8.1: Overview interaction roles
Interaction roles
Practices
Monological constructions Evaluator Postulator First-person narrator Demarcations Interpretations Small talk
Phases
Interaction offer
Courses
Single comment threads
8.1
Coconstructions Supporter Challenger Contemplator
Incompatible constructions Attacker Admonisher
Demarcations Interpretations Discussions Disputes Jokes Interaction offer, Acceptance, Development, End
Disputes Reprimands
Short comment threads Focused threads Diversifying threads
Interaction offer, Acceptance, Development/Escalation, Abortion Aborted comment threads
Monological constructions
Even though the providers of commenting interfaces generally want their commenters to exchange opinions and collectively discuss a given issue, many comments go unanswered. As a consequence, many commenters engage in monological constructions of the euro crisis as the civic and political issue under discussion in this analysis. Within monological constructions three different interaction
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roles can be identified: the evaluator, the postulator and the first-person narrator. What unites these three interaction roles are a number of typical commenting practices, typical phases in an interaction as well as typical courses of development that interactions can take. Monological constructions do not necessarily occur in an interaction between multiple commenters. Although they involve an offer of interaction, it goes unreciprocated. Nevertheless, commenters construct the euro crisis as a political and civic issue in their monological commenting: they voice their perspectives and interpretations of the crisis, the European Union and Europe more generally and possibly even the conclusion they would like to see. In doing so, they clearly focus on and engage with the crisis, yet this engagement does not result in lengthy interactions. That is why monological constructions do not necessarily correspond with the deliberative norms and anticipations concerning a community discourse that many providers seek to implement through their interface inscriptions (cf. chapter 6). For monological constructions only one typical interaction phase could be identified: an offer of interaction. The lack of reciprocation from other commenters means that people simply voice their unchallenged constructions of the euro crisis. With their inherent potential for interaction (Neuberger 2007: 42-43), comments should always be seen as an invitation for further steps in an interaction, yet monological constructions by definition remain unquestioned, unchallenged and unanswered.
Figure 8.1: Typical phases of an interaction in monological constructions
Commenters put forward their constructions of the euro crisis without discussing, negotiating or further considering the issue in an exchange with others. The various interface inscriptions enabling and encouraging feedback and responses between commenters are not used here. The lack of exchange in monological constructions is, therefore, probably not in the primary interests of providers
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insofar as they do not correspond to the guidelines concerning a shared discourse on the topic that providers lay out for commenting discussions. There is also only one typical course that an interaction in monological constructions can take. As an unreciprocated offer for interaction, the comment necessarily remains a single comment thread. But these single comments can differ in how they respond to a primary input or address others. Commenters can either make a direct, indirect or no reference at all to the news article, blog post or social networking site post. In so doing, commenters either voice very specific constructions in reaction to the content in the primary input or they set their own focus in the overall crisis discourse by explicating more general constructions of the crisis irrespective of the primary input. When commenters respond to what has been discussed in the primary input, they often react to constructions articulated by the journalist or blogger. In that case, monological constructions often concern specific elements within the overall crisis discourse. Alternatively, commenters might set their own focus and position themselves independently of the primary input. Furthermore, comments as potential entry points to an interaction can differ in how they address interaction partners. Commenters can either make concrete or unspecified offers for interaction. But while a large number of comments in this sample concretely address other people, they received no response. The dominant commenting practices within monological constructions mostly stem from issue-oriented interactions. Commenters demarcate and interpret the euro crisis by mixing and matching various commenting practices in their offers of interaction, in their references to the primary input and in their addressing of interaction partners. Although they do not engage with others as most providers would wish, commenters nonetheless construct the euro crisis as the political or civic issue under discussion. As a form of civic communication, monological constructions in commenting can thus not be considered irrelevant. As I will demonstrate in my analysis, the three different interaction roles that people adopt within single comment threads offer different possibilities for constructing the crisis monologically.
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8.1.1 Evaluators Evaluators position themselves with regard to previously voiced constructions of the crisis by referring to earlier statements in a primary input. The reactive nature of an evaluator’s comments implies that people are not necessarily engaging in their own constructions of the euro crisis as a political or civic issue, but are following the line that journalists or bloggers articulated previously. This does not imply that evaluators engage with the crisis in a less intensive way, but simply that they pick up a specific construction of the euro crisis and engage with it. In the following example from the French Libération, a commenter reacts to a primary input and a construction of a future European Union as an economic and monetary union:
Figure 8.2: Libération, 26 June 2012, ‘Au sommet de Bruxelles, féderer l’Europe sans en avoir l’air’ ‘All the better. It’s better to have a functioning federal Europe that prospers than having European states that fall flat on their face one after the other.’ [Translation by the author]
This commenter agrees with the vision stated in the primary input of a more integrated European Union as a possible way out of the crisis. The commenter does not voice his or her own original construction of the crisis, but rather positions him- or herself with regard to an already formulated construction of the crisis and of Europe. Evaluators, thus, usually take a certain construction of the crisis as the foundation on which they voice their own opinion. In their reactive engagement with the crisis, they especially rely on demarcation practices in issue-oriented interactions – specifically by referencing and quoting, evaluating as well as summarizing (cf. chapter 7.2.1).
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As the term implies, an evaluator’s reaction depends on making an assessment in their comment. They often post short evaluative comments in which they position themselves with regard to previously articulated constructions through supportive or opposing statements. In some cases, they may ‘let off steam’ in short outbursts which seldom combine different commenting practices. The two commenters in the following example from the Facebook page of The Economist can be considered evaluators because they briefly express an opinion on the article:
Figure 8.3: Facebook The Economist, 29 June 2012, ‘Keeping it real’
The first comment picks up the terminology used in The Economist’s post to negatively evaluate the current situation – presumably regarding the political handling of interest rates in Europe. The second commenter moves further away from the content of the original Facebook post by summarizing a political vision for Europe and the European Union. Such short evaluative statements occur across the commenting spaces in this sample, but they particularly dominate many news media’s Facebook pages. Here, comments generally seem to be
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shorter than within the in-house commenting spaces of the same news media. Such comments thus support the claim that the interfaces of social networking sites are engineered as volatile spaces where providers offer a commenting space for brief evaluative statements (cf. chapter 6.1.4). Because evaluators mostly position themselves with regard to previously voiced constructions of the euro crisis, they depend on references to the primary input. These references can either be specific or general. Through specific references, commenters primarily re-articulate specific constructions of Europe and the European Union in the overall crisis discourse. For example, the following comment from Der Standard was written in response to a guest comment by Jens Weidmann, president of the German Federal Bank. The commenter picks up very specific aspects of Weidmann’s argument – especially his ideas for a European fiscal union as a solution to the euro crisis. The commenter makes an explicit reference to this position, even though he or she does not mention any details:
Figure 8.4: Der Standard, 26 June 2012, ‘Nur eine Stabilitätsunion kann den Euro retten’ ‘Weidmann is right. And Merkel and Faymann should support him unconditionally! So, no to Eurobonds and common liability with no ifs, ands or buts. Each state has to finance itself, as long as the funding states have no veto over the expenditures of the deficit states.’ [Translation by the author]
This reference to the primary input is specific but not very extensive. The commenter makes clear that he or she agrees with Weidmann’s position and voices his or her perspective on the European Union based on Weidmann’s argument – not as a Union where debts will be shared, but as a Union where each state is responsible for their own financial situation. A different comment sequence from The Guardian shows how more general references to the primary input in evaluative statements result in less specific constructions of the euro crisis. The following comments are reactions to a pri-
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mary input in which a proposal for deeper integration within the Eurozone by the leaders of the four central European institutions at the time, Herman Van Rompuy, José Manuel Barroso, Mario Draghi and Jean-Claude Juncker, was discussed. The first comments to this article are very short evaluative statements, which do not refer to the specifics of the primary input or to the suggested plan for the Eurozone to be re-structured into an economic and monetary union:
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Figure 8.5: The Guardian, 26 June 2012, ‘Leaders draft federal plan to save the eurozone’
Through such general references, these commenters react to the content of the primary input, although they do not provide any details. Like evaluators in general, they engage with an existing construction of the euro crisis as a political and civic issue: either by rejecting a certain construction or by basing their evaluations on it and thereby accepting or at least not questioning it.
8.1.2 Postulators Postulators not only react to what has been articulated before, but voice their own constructions of the crisis in longer statements, in which they lay out their chain of thinking. They substantiate their constructions of the euro crisis, the European Union and of Europe in detail. In doing so, they do not rely on references to previous statements, as they set their own focus in the overall crisis discourse. But they share with evaluators the focus on issue-oriented interactions, especially those commenting practices that are used within demarcations and interpretations (e.g. summarizing and informing, attributing responsibility, deducing, translating and speculating). Postulators might, for instance, engage in their constructions of the euro crisis based on a supposedly factual examination of the situation and logical conclusions concerning the crisis. These conclusions
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may be asserted for both past and anticipated future developments, as in this comment from the Financial Times:
Figure 8.6: Financial Times, 25 June 2012, ‘How to shift Germany out of “can't do” mode’
Here, the commenter starts by criticising a guest article, in which George Soros claimed that Angela Merkel should reconsider her position ‘that a political union should precede a fully fledged fiscal and banking union’ (Financial Times, 25 June 2012, ‘How to shift Germany out of “can’t do” mode’). The commenter continues to explain his or her opposition to George Soros’ article by attributing blame to certain nation states and by deducing likely consequences for the European Union if Angela Merkel deviated from her position. This example demonstrates how postulators make their line of thinking transparent when articulating their constructions of the euro crisis and of related issues. They interrogate the situation and explain how they reached certain conclusions on the euro crisis. In doing so, they articulate their own constructions of the crisis. As monological constructions, they are simply postulated instead of being challenged by and discussed with others. Although postulators move beyond reacting to the constructions in a primary input, they might nevertheless refer to the content of a news media article or a comment in a blog post. In such cases, they connect their own – usually very specific – constructions with specific elements in the overall crisis discourse. The following lengthy comment demonstrates how the commenter reacts to the content in the primary input and uses it to construct their own narrative of the crisis, voicing his or her vision for a legitimate European Union:
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Figure 8.7: Charlemagne, 26 June 2012, ‘A delicate proposal’
This comment was a reaction to a Charlemagne post covering the proposal by the four leaders of the European institutions mentioned above. The commenter makes a direct reference to the content of the blog post by judging the proposal to be worrisome. He or she considers the proposal to mean more control for Germany specifically and less control for other nation states over their own fiscal system and national budget. In that sense, this comment contributes a personal point of view to the report, as many providers would like to see people doing. Although this comment did not trigger any responses, it still received feedback in the form of 27 upvotes or recommendations from others.
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Postulators can also frame their own focus on the crisis, regardless of what was covered in the primary input. The following example from The Guardian, likewise on the plan by the four leading EU politicians, demonstrates that postulators mostly advance more general constructions of the crisis and related issues:
Figure 8.8: The Guardian, 26 June 2012, ‘Leaders draft federal plan to save the eurozone’
The commenter makes no reference to the primary input – the plan proposed by Van Rompuy, Barosso, Draghi and Juncker – but instead sees the European Union as dominated or under the threat of being dominated solely by business interests at the cost of the democratic representation of European citizens. The comment can be understood as generally denying democratic legitimacy to the European Union in its current form. This person’s construction of the crisis as the issue under discussion thus emerges from a self-selected focus within the overall crisis discourse. Although postulators ostensibly draw logical conclusions or substantiate their statements by quoting facts and figures, the subjectivity of such comments must nevertheless be acknowledged. What someone considers valid evidence and information is highly subjective. While postulators advance certain information as objective facts, these are embedded within their own individual construction of the situation. In the following example from Spiegel Online, the commenter offers their view of the European Union as a community of nation states, where debts might be commonly shared but only on the condition that each member state has equivalent social and fiscal systems. He or she substantiates his opinion by quoting the information that Germans usually retire at 67, whereas the French can retire when at the age of 60. While providers specifically want people to substantiate their claims by referring to external information, this must nonetheless be recognized as one element within a highly subjective con-
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struction process. However, as they provide information and make their thinking transparent, postulators provide a number of starting points on which others might challenge their respective constructions.
Figure 8.9: Spiegel Online, 28 June 2012, ‘Merkel lässt Monti abblitzen’ ‘Things are getting interesting. Deep respect for Merkel, if she gets through with it. A communalization of €-debts cannot be in the interest of Germany. We work until we’re 67, the French only until they’re 60. A bailout fund would need to be preceded by equality in tax treatment and a reconciliation of the social systems. Why should a German pay for a French person who retires early? Hopefully, Mutti [a colloquial term for Angela Merkel] doesn’t fall on her face.’ [Translation by the author]
But postulators not only rely on objective facts to substantiate their constructions of the euro crisis. They might equally rely on moral and ethical categories. In the following comment from a longer interaction thread in the Financial Times, one commenter expresses his or her conception of the EU as a Union of solidarity in which a ‘pick and choose approach’ would be morally dishonest:
Figure 8.10: Financial Times, 1 July 2012, ‘Cameron considers EU referendum’
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Postulators generally articulate firmly established constructions of the euro crisis, of the European Union, the EU and other related issues. They do not demonstrate uncertainty or insecurity in their perspective on the crisis situation. Instead, they engage in monological constructions and present their views on the issue, for example by demanding certain actions to be carried out. In these cases, comments are usually not very complex. In the following example from Guido Fawkes, one commenter reacts to the primary input on the possibility of a referendum concerning UK membership in the EU. This person asks for such a referendum to be held in the current legislative period and specifies that it should simply be an in/out question:
Figure 8.11: Guido Fawkes, 28 June 2012, ‘Full Text of Tory MPs letter to Cameron’
Such demands are very common across this sample. They often occur in reaction to policies and political proposals in the primary input. Commenters use these opportunities to position themselves with regard to the issues, while at the same time asserting their constructions of the crisis situation and of the European Union more generally. But they do not engage in an open discussion with others. Their monological constructions of the crisis therefore do not fulfil the central discussion norm of openness to new perspectives and arguments that providers seek to implement.
8.1.3 First-Person Narrators A less common interaction role is the first-person narrator. When people take on this role, they construct the crisis by relating its impact on their personal life. First-person narrators engage in demarcating practices as part of issue-oriented
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interactions (e.g. informing) as well as in small talk practices within more relation-oriented interactions (e.g. lifeworld referencing). Their accounts are based in subjective experiences, sentiments and attitudes towards the crisis. Consequently, they construct the crisis not so much as a policy issue for which political actors are to blame and which needs regulation as well as political solutions, but rather as a societal concern that leaves its mark on people’s lives. The following comment from Der Standard, for instance, perceives the reporting on the crisis as an exaggeration, which simply is not palpable in everyday life:
Figure 8.12: Der Standard, 26 June 2012, ‘Den Finanzmärkten droht der Kollaps’ ‘Every day we hear an ‘opinion’ from another expert. If there weren’t any media, I am sure that 70% of the population would live just as they have for the past 20 years – how many people would really notice “a crisis”. Diesel also costs twice as much as 20 years ago, but instead of 14 litres my car only needs 7 litres – remember the price of bread/milk in the 80s (and the mountains of butter). Politicians all seem aimless and incompetent. It’s not that people don’t have any money, it’s just they don’t want to spend it, when they don’t know how things will go…’ [Translation by the author]
Another person in the same forum, but reacting to a different article, reflects what impacts the demise of the euro might have by comparing the current situation with his or her personal situation in pre-euro times:
Figure 8.13: Der Standard, 26 June 2012, ‘Europa ohne Euro wäre massiver Rückschritt’ ‘Well, when I think of the time before the euro… we surely weren’t worse off then…’ [Translation by the author]
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When constructing the crisis as a societal concern impacting on people’s lives, first-person narrators rely on personal stories and emotional perceptions. Their constructions of the crisis are often disconnected from any specific aspects in the primary inputs, which they seldom reference. During the period of sampling the selected primary inputs did not generally focus on the impact of the crisis on people’s everyday lives - a tendency that is perhaps not typical of reporting on the crisis overall. The fact that sampling took place during the week of the socalled European crisis summit, which naturally focused on the political negotiations, might have shifted the discourse away from the severe societal impacts of the crisis. Another explanation for the less prominent role of first-person narrators in the comments on the crisis reporting might be that no so-called crisis countries were included in the sample.
8.2
Co-Constructions
The basic idea behind online commenting, as articulated by providers in this analysis, is to offer people an opportunity to discuss news media articles or blog posts. Interactions in which people co-construct the euro crisis constitute much longer interaction threads, where people position themselves with regard to each other’s perspectives on the euro crisis. Commenters’ shared engagement with and open exchange about an issue, as desired by the providers of commenting interfaces, is substantiated through several interface functions enabling people to respond to each other, to demonstrate their approval or disapproval of other comments through feedback buttons or to follow others in order to be notified about their latest activities (cf. chapter 6). However, even though commenters make use of these functions and engage with each other in longer interaction threads, they nonetheless do not always comply with the discussion and community norms that providers inscribe into their interfaces. Instead, co-constructions in interaction threads are often marked by conflict and dissent, which can be fairly extreme. While commenters also support and substantiate other people’s arguments, the interaction analysis has demonstrated that negative evaluations of other people’s comments usually lead to longer interactions. I will substantiate this claim in the following through a detailed investigation of the three typical
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interaction roles within co-constructing interaction threads: the supporter, the challenger and the contemplator. Although dissent is not in providers’ primary interests, this analysis demonstrates that it is equally not necessarily problematic for commenting as a form of civic communication. Commenters continue to engage with the crisis as the issue under discussion by negotiating dissent in their comment interactions. Dissent in longer interaction threads is often marked by people’s mutual rejections of each other’s constructions of the euro crisis. But mutually engaging with the political crisis, even from very divergent points of view, does not automatically lead to the termination of people’s relations and interactions altogether. As Georg Simmel (2009: 228) has argued, contradiction and conflict can also trigger exchanges and engagement. This does not only apply to interactions in relation to the euro crisis, but also to political institutions and political decision makers. For the specific case of the euro crisis, German sociologist Georg Vobruba, for instance, claims that the move of the European Union towards a European Monetary Union meant that nation states could no longer remain indifferent to each other. On the contrary, the contentiousness of monetary policies obliged nation states to engage with each other – even if this meant conflictual engagement. As with Simmel’s argument, Vobruba considers these types of conflict creating a space in which nations can gradually move towards deeper European integration (Vobruba 2014: 196-197). This is in fact a common claim. Crises in the history of the EU are said to have regularly resulted in a more strongly integrated European Union, which then increasingly became the addressee for political crises (Krzyżanowski 2009: 31; Triandafyllidou et al. 2009). On the level of people’s everyday experiences, too, the euro crisis was considered a disruptive moment in which communication about Europe and the European Union intensified, established constructions were questioned and conceptions of Europe and the EU reconstructed (Hepp et al. 2016: 32-35). However, Vobruba also reminds us that conflict does not necessarily lead to greater integration. In moments where Europe is renegotiated and reconstructed, the outcome could equally be break-up. The same holds for civic online communication on the euro crisis, which is why a closer look at the forms that conflicts, contradictions and dissent can take in online commenting seems necessary. The question is how far people proceed to co-construct the euro crisis as a political and civic issue.
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As long as people continue to co-construct the euro crisis, dissent in online comments can be considered a relevant form of civic communication. With this starting point it becomes clear that online deliberation is not the only legitimate form of civic talk. Such an approach is in line with Peter Dahlgren’s criticism of the deliberative model for neglecting the importance of the private for the political: ‘As has been pointed out often, the idea of “public” is associated implacably with reason, rationality, objectivity, argument, work, text, information and knowledge (and, de facto, one might add, discursively dominant, masculine and Caucasian). “Private” resonates with the personal, emotion, intimacy, subjectivity, identity, consumption, aesthetics, style, entertainment, popular culture and pleasure. If this whole side is walled off analytically from our understanding of politics, then we will never be able to understand, for example, the motivations, identities and passions that can launch people into the public sphere.’ (Dahlgren 2006: 275) In encouraging engagement with the issue at hand, the providers of commenting interfaces thus promote the notion of the well-constructed argument substantiated by information and facts, which is comprehensible and respectful, responsive and concise. But the analysis of people’s online commenting on the euro crisis substantiates Dahlgren’s claim. People’s interactions about the euro crisis are often highly emotional. Even when commenters support their statement with supposedly objective facts, their dissent over the legitimacy of such supposedly factual information vividly demonstrates that people often do not reach a consensus in their constructions of the euro crisis. In what follows, I will analyse how people in longer interaction threads involving dissent and subjectivity construct ideas of the euro crisis, of Europe and the European Union as a political and civic issue. The typical interaction phases in co-constructing interaction threads demonstrate how commenters shift from engaging with the primary input as in single comment threads towards engaging with each other. Co-constructions of the euro crisis strongly depend on people’s mutual referencing and their often continuous exchange across multiple comments. Within interaction threads commenters can accept an offer for interaction, further develop the interaction in multiple responsive comments and eventually bring an interaction to an end (cf. Figure 8.14).
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Figure 8.14: Typical phases of an interaction in co-constructions
After the acceptance phase, which simply means that someone has replied to a first comment, in their developing phase interaction threads differ in the length of an interaction, the number of comments, the number of participants and finally in their ending phases. Yet the common denominator of these typical interaction phases is that commenters respond to and position themselves with regard to each other’s constructions of the euro crisis. Compared with single comments, they do not primarily engage with the primary input, but with other people’s constructions of the crisis. When commenters stop contributing new perspectives on the crisis, the interactions often come to a halt. Towards the end of some interaction threads, comments become shorter and people no longer contribute new arguments or constructions of the euro crisis and its related issues. Instead, they simply make affirmative or opposing statements. One typical ending phase occurs when commenters no longer contribute new arguments, new perspectives on the crisis and thus no new reference points for potential interactions. The different courses that longer interaction threads can take are typically established in the developing phase of an interaction. Depending on the number of participants, the number of comments and the degree of mutual references, interactions about the crisis will differ in their intensity and in the degree to which commenters address each other’s constructions of the euro crisis. Some threads will merely consist of two people repeatedly engaging with each other over multiple responsive comments. Such focused interactions are often an intense, detailed exchange about people’s constructions of the crisis and its related issues. Other developing phases will see many different commenters contributing to an interaction in diversifying comment threads. New commenters join while others leave an interaction. In such cases, constructions often remain more general and commenters are more concerned with articulating their own constructions in the first place. By doing so, they position themselves with regard to other
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commenters’ constructions, yet without discussing each other’s arguments in great detail. Constructions of the euro crisis as a political and civic issue are mostly articulated within issue-oriented interactions. But commenters at the same time position themselves in more relation-oriented interactions. In a mutual exchange about the crisis both forms of interaction and their respective commenting practices must therefore be seen as complementing each other. In conflict-laden encounters between commenters over different constructions of the euro crisis, primarily issue-oriented interactions can increasingly move towards relationoriented interactions. In other words, within a discussion of the euro crisis people might find themselves facing a discussion partner with a completely different perception of the euro crisis. In many cases, they will start to increasingly move away from engaging with the crisis as the issue under discussion towards targeting the opposing person. In such cases, interaction threads might begin to undermine particular discussion norms as implemented by the providers of commenting interfaces. Disagreement, opposition and dissent do not necessarily prevent people from constructing the euro crisis as a political and civic issue. However, it is essential that conflict does not escalate, in the sense that it increasingly diverges from addressing the euro crisis as the central issue under discussion. As a more detailed look at the typical interaction roles in longer interaction threads will demonstrate, focusing on the euro crisis is essential to keep co-constructions going.
8.2.1 Supporters Supporters have a role to play in co-constructions when dissent prevails in online commenting. They especially matter when a group of commenters mutually align themselves in opposition to another group with a very different perspective on the issue at hand. Supporters engage in issue-oriented interactions to substantiate other commenters’ claims about the euro crisis, and thus contribute further aspects and arguments to an already voiced construction of the euro crisis. In doing so, they engage in practices that are typical for discussions, interpretations and demarcations, such as summarizing, informing or speculating about the cri-
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sis. They attribute responsibility to political actors, deduce and derive as well as translate possible causes of or solutions to the crisis. Compared with evaluators, supporters do not only express affirmative statements, but actively contribute new perspectives along the previously voiced line of thought by which they deepen and strengthen already formulated constructions of the euro crisis. In the following comment on Spiegel Online, someone agrees with a previous commenter on the lack of control for the German parliament within the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The commenter takes this opportunity to further reflect on the supposedly undemocratic set-up of the European Union, where larger member countries like Germany have the same vote as small countries like Malta:
Figure 8.15: Spiegel Online, 30 June 2012, ‘Unionsfraktionschef Kauder: “Der Rettungsfonds wird kein Selbstbedienungsladen”’ ‘This is exactly how it is. Germany has already lost its control over the ECB, where an Italian governs and every euro country has the same vote, Malta as much as Germany. The person who thought of that was not interested in democracy. By the way, this new supervisory authority is established within the ECB. It’s hardly conceivable that an Italian bank would be denied a rescue loan. When will Germans finally learn that people in the South take the people in the North for useful idiots (That is not a prejudice, but my conclusion after 15 years in an EU organisation).’ [Translation by the author]
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Supporters refer explicitly to the details of another person’s comment and articulate how exactly they agree with it. They typically participate in short interaction threads without engaging in a continuous exchange about the crisis. They take a stand once with regard to a previous comment and further substantiate a previous construction of the crisis. Nevertheless, supporters can also appear in longer interactions threads, when discussion camps emerge within an interaction. This is the case when interaction threads become more complex with a growing number of contributors or with commenters repeatedly entering or leaving an ongoing discussion. While a high number of participants ensure more and continuously new perspectives on the euro crisis, the constantly changing constellation of commenters makes it difficult to react to the specifics within each person’s argument. Consequently, sub-threads with only a couple of commenters develop, where people occasionally start to form opposing discussion camps by positioning themselves with regard to each other. Each group engages in internally supportive and substantiating statements, while at the same time directing opposing and distancing statements externally. The following example shows an extract from a comment thread with eleven comments in the Charlemagne forum, where four people are opposing one person:
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Figure 8.16: Charlemagne, 29 June 2012, ‘Less disunion’
These commenters are arguing whether Germany or the so-called crisis countries are the prime responsible party for the euro crisis and why more and more countries – especially Italy – need to request bailouts. The larger group of commenters supports each other in their arguments and in their opposing statements with regard to the first commenter. While discussion camps do not exclusively rely on supporters, they take an active role within them. These often very long interaction threads again demonstrate that supporters back an already articulated construction of the euro crisis with further arguments. In doing so, they follow on the one hand a central provider interest by providing new information about the euro crisis while engaging with the arguments made by others. On the other hand, supporters mostly stick to their articulated constructions of the euro crisis and tend not to be open to other perspectives.
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8.2.2 Challengers Challengers question and attack constructions of the euro crisis that other commenters articulate. Yet in launching these challenges, they nevertheless acknowledge and engage with the arguments posted by others, hence such interactions based on dissent can nonetheless be considered a form of coconstruction. Challengers usually do not diverge fundamentally from their own previously established constructions of the euro crisis. Instead, based on their fixed position, they express opposition in reaction to previous comments. A central element in challengers’ comments is to express dissent by engaging in both issue- as well as relation-oriented interactions. They use commenting practices typical for demarcation, interpretation and discussion interactions. When focusing on the euro crisis, they inform, attribute responsibility, deduce, translate, speculate, position, support and contradict. Alternatively, in more relationoriented interactions they also criticise, discredit, insult and sometimes even harass. The analysis demonstrates that the tone of interactions can differ immensely when challengers target other people and their statements, depending on whether they target specific elements in another person’s thinking or the validity of their overall argument. The rigidness with which people stick to their constructions of the euro crisis often leads to severe forms of dissent between commenters. Although most providers in this sample welcome people to express disagreement and to contest each other’s thinking, they do not consider such severe forms of dissent a discussion norm worth striving for. My analysis, however, demonstrates that even when diverging from provider ideals of civility and respectfulness, challengers nonetheless refer to the euro crisis and to the arguments that others put forward. In other words, they continue to co-construct the euro crisis as a political and civic issue. Challengers might express opposition by questioning another person’s line of thought. In the following example from The Guardian, a previous commenter considered a possible Brexit unlikely, because of the many economic ties that the UK has to other European nations. While continental Europe would supposedly not be targeted that severely by a Brexit, for the UK itself the loss of these economic relations would have serious implications. The two commenters below
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argue against this perception and furthermore take the opportunity to claim that the euro and its implementation was flawed from the beginning:
Figure 8.17: The Guardian, 29 June 2012, ‘Eurozone crisis live’
As in the example above, challengers offer their own perspective on the crisis by confronting and criticizing a previous statement, questioning the argument in a previous comment or providing counter arguments. Furthermore, they add new perspectives and new information on the crisis as can be seen in the subsequent screenshot from Charlemagne. As a result, people contribute alternative constructions of the euro crisis. In the following comment thread, two commenters discuss the EU crisis summit and its results over multiple comments. The starting comment primarily criticizes the Charlemagne reporting of the summit and articulates some alternative interpretations of the event. In passing the same person mentions that Angela Merkel knows that a failing euro would mean the end of the EU, which he or she considers not to be in the interest of Germany. The following commenter
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focuses on this specific statement and makes it the basis for his or her construction of the EU as not necessarily relying on a continuation of the euro:
Figure 8.18: Charlemagne, 29 June 2012, ‘Less disunion’
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The first commenter does not acknowledge the validity of the previous argument – that the end of the euro would mean the end of the EU – and rejects the statement in its totality without providing any specific explanations. The second commenter responds at length by providing counter arguments. He or she argues that a collapse of the euro would pose serious problems for the common market and that its demise could potentially trigger hostility between member countries and even endanger the European peace project. The first commenter replies again and projects a future vision for the European Union as a full political union, based on the argument that the second commenter just put forward – namely that it simply would not be possible to move backwards to less integration in the European Union. In this comment thread, it becomes apparent that challengers can either simply reject an argument completely or provide counter arguments. By rejecting a statement, a person usually also rejects certain constructions of the euro crisis – in this case the idea of the European Union depending on the survival of the euro. When people provide counter arguments, their co-constructions of the euro crisis, the European Union or Europe are usually more specific and detailed. But even when commenters promote different perspectives and disagree fundamentally about the euro crisis, as challengers they acknowledge that different views on the crisis situation exist. Despite their divergent perspectives, they continue to co-construct the euro crisis as a political and civic issue in their online commenting. Disagreement over different perspectives on the crisis appears to provide people with sufficient reference points from which they can co-construct the euro crisis at length. That is why challengers often engage in interaction threads with few contributors, but who repeatedly react to each other. They target very specific details in each others’ constructions. Within an interaction thread from the German political blog Spiegelfechter we can, for instance, see five commenters engaging in an exchange spanning 10 comments. Two participants in particular repeatedly challenge each other in opposing statements. They debate whether one could have been aware of the upcoming housing bubble, which consequently led to a banking crisis in the United States and triggered the global financial and economic crisis.
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Figure 8.19: Spiegelfechter, 1 July 2012, ‘Krise der Institutionen’ Quoted comment: ‘The US, Spain and others instead had a high employment rate and a great growth rate. Today we know that this was not sustainable growth, but based on asburd real estate speculations that directly and indirectly of course also employed many people in the housing boom.’ Reponse comment: ‘We only know this today? Really? Many years ago, our own politcians held forth to us dumb Europeans how the US is the locomotive of the world economy and an example for correct civic behaviour: people have to consume and that’s what the Americans did. Only the tightfisted Europeans are hoarding their bloody moneybags and don’t care about supporting their domestic economic activity at all. Thank God for the US, which would never commit such an heinous crime. […]’ Quoted comment: ‘and the money for this growth was financed by the FED and the ECB through their cheap money policy and their incentives for taking on debts.’ Response comment: ‘Like the god of money Alan Greenspan flooded the markets with liquidity and the people bought massively. That there would be a limit to it, when you buy your house on credit and all the stuff that goes with it – if you even take on a mortgage on your house purely so that an SUV sits in front of your indebted house – and then with the smallest collapse you cannot keep those things, then you might be suspicious about an approaching catastrophe. As long as the game was on, those who warned about it were only laughed at.’ [Translation by the author]
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In the example above, the second commenter partly questions the other person’s explanations and partly provides alternative perspectives. He or she especially blames European politicians for destabilizing the euro zone, given that European citizens were more prudent than American house buyers. In subsequent comments, the first commenter again repeats his position that almost no one saw the crisis coming, whereas responsible actors in the financial markets and central banks should nevertheless be blamed. The two people in this thread thus provide each other with specific reference points, which they discuss and debate. They engage with each other’s arguments by expressing at least partly different opinions. Their constructions generally concern the specific question of who is to blame for the escalation of the euro crisis after having failed to recognize the severity of the housing bubble in the US. Challengers, like supporters, furthermore play a role in discussion camps. In the following comment from the Financial Times five people repeatedly engage in the same interaction thread with numerous comments, responses and mutual references. The author of the following comment quite clearly positions him- or herself in support of the first two commenters on the one side, and in opposition to the other two commenters on the other:
Figure 8.20: Financial Times, 29 June 2012, ‘More questions than answers after the summit’
This comment demonstrates how issue- and relation-oriented interactions overlap in people’s co-constructions of the euro crisis. Considering that this specific interaction thread evolves across numerous comments among the same group of
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commenters, it becomes clear that constructions of the euro crisis are not postulated and then go unquestioned as is the case within single comment threads. Instead, people’s different perspectives are the starting point for co-constructing the euro crisis and for articulating relations with regard to each other in doing so.
8.2.3 Contemplators Instead of attacking or questioning a previous statement as challengers do, contemplators rather give an opponent alternative food for thought when coconstructing the euro crisis as a political and civic issue. They are more open towards new ideas concerning the euro crisis and usually have not reached fixed constructions of the crisis. They often demonstrate their willingness to discuss their conclusions with others. Because of this orientation towards other people, contemplators rely both on issue- as well as relation-oriented interactions. In relation-oriented interactions they refer to their lifeworld, engage in small talk and jokes by inventing stories, make fun of the situation or take crisis developments out of context. At the same time, they also interpret the issue by deducing as well as translating and speculating about crisis developments. Within their discussions of the issue, they can also support or contradict previous statements. Contemplators’ comments are marked by uncertainty, in that they weigh different arguments against each other. They ponder what might have caused the crisis or what possible solutions there could be. The following thread from Der Standard demonstrates how commenters might feel overwhelmed by the crisis and try to come up with solutions. The first commenter suspects the reason for people’s distrust of the EU is the lack of democratic legitimacy of EU institutions. As a solution, he or she proposes political reforms, which would lead to a more legitimate transnational parliamentary system in Europe. The following commenter basically agrees with this position, but contemplates which political actors in the current system could be trusted with proposing and executing such reforms. This seems to be an open question for both commenters. Their contemplations thus do not result in rigid, ready-made constructions of the euro crisis. Instead, they are still trying to grasp the current situation. In the process of doing so, they mutually co-construct the crisis in specific ways, yet a sense of perplexity generally marks their constructions:
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Figure 8.21: Der Standard, 27 June 2012, ‘Ein Lob auf Faymann und Spindelegger’ First commenter: ‘Democracy. Transferring competencies to Brussels is necessary and would surely be more accepted if the whole thing didn’t happen so undemocratically. If there were a true parliamentary system in Europe, in other words some sort of federal state of Europe, then a transnational democracy could emerge. In the current state, competencies are being redirected towards institutions that are either not democratically controlled or legitimized or only very indirectly. It is not surprising that everyone feels like the EU is the dictatorship of capital. The future lies neither in the outmoded nation state nor in an undemocratic EU. There needs to be political reforms towards a democratic Europe that will be able to face the challenges that globalization brings with it.’ Second commenter: ‘Green, with a small addition. The EU IS currently a dictatorship of capital. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a similar post to what you have just written, but I also asked the question: Who do people think is capable of creating the balanced and just democratic structures in a United Europe? In my opinion, neither the national politicians currently in power nor the heads of the EU are capable of doing so. Most of them probably don’t even see the necessity. They only see: crisis, banking union, fiscal pact, ESM, governments of experts. Citizens’ participation? Doesn’t matter or could even be dangerous. That’s the big problem.’ [Translation by the author]
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Contemplators engage in short, focused as well as in longer diversifying comment threads. In their attempt to make sense of the crisis and other people’s comments, they might respond to others or refer to specific information in the primary input. In the following exchange from Libération, two commenters refer to the report on Herman van Rompuy and José Manuel Barosso in the primary input. Neither commenter takes specific information on the euro crisis as a starting point for engaging in co-constructions of the euro crisis. Instead, they seem rather perplexed about the current state of the European Union:
Figure 8.22: Libération, 26 June 2012, ‘Au sommet de Bruxelles, fédérer l'Europe sans en avoir l'air’ First commenter: ‘They make me think of an old pathetic duo of comedians that no one watches any longer. Outside of Europe one hardly listens to them, people receive them politely within such reunions as G8/G20 and one puts them at the end of the table so that they don’t disturb the big ones.’ Second commenters: ‘Maybe in fact the European countries have remained in the age of Neanderthal, in small tribes that destroy each other and where you make little squeaks of outrage at the smallest occasion. Maybe we are chronically attached to what has been and in fact absolutely incapable of federalism – that seems to be the case. Well, avec D. Cohn Bendit, it is possible that in a couple of years no European country will participate at a G20.’ [Translation by the author]
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The second comment in particular reflects on the possible incapability of the EU’s member countries to cooperate in a federal structure due to national sensitivities. They both engage in more general constructions of the European Union and its people. They do not set out facts about the EU in crisis times, nor do they sketch out specific visions for Europe as a postulator would. Instead, they mutually reflect on the possible reasons for the perceived demise of the EU. When contemplators refer to specific elements in other comments, they usually try to make sense of these statements by integrating them into their constructions of the crisis. The following example from the Financial Times shows an editor of the paper contributing to a comment discussion. He responds to a person’s comment, partly in agreement but partly questioning that commenter’s deductions. The editor is especially concerned with who Germany should be trading with internationally. The commenter who is addressed incorporates this objection into a later comment and explains in detail why he or she does not consider this to be a problem:
Figure 8.23: Financial Times, 25 June 2012, ‘How to shift Germany out of “can't do” mode’
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Contemplators, however, do not necessarily depend on such specific references. They can also set their own focus within the overall crisis discourse and articulate their constructions based on a self-selected starting point. Compared with the postulator and the challenger, the role of the contemplator is less often found in this sample. Commenters frequently articulate rigid, ready-made constructions of the euro crisis without being open to alternative arguments and new perspectives. Contemplators’ less fixed constructions of the crisis and the European Union, however, usually mean that they co-construct the crisis as a political and civic issue by at least acknowledging and at times integrating other perspectives into their own.
8.3
Incompatible Constructions
The above insights into commenters’ readiness to negotiate dissent in their comment interactions does not disguise the fact that interactions can also fail. In such cases, providers’ lack of enthusiasm for dissent within comment forums is not completely without reason. Occasionally, people’s different constructions of the euro crisis emerge as incompatible. As a consequence, people often stop referring to each other’s constructions and exclusively focus on articulating their incompatibility by making their dissenting relation the sole focus of their interactions. The typical interaction roles behind incompatible constructions are the attacker and the admonisher. When their constructions are incompatible, people assert that another commenter’s construction is not legitimate. These interactions are subsequently often broken off. But the incompatibility between commenters also refers to different expectations of how the crisis should be discussed. In other words, people have incompatible expectations regarding what they consider appropriate commenting practices and how co-constructions should be achieved. When interactions fail, the political crisis echoes in the communicative crisis between commenters. As failing interactions build on previous interactions or at least attempted interactions, they have an offer, acceptance and development phase just like in co-constructions:
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Figure 8.24: Typical phases of an interaction in incompatible constructions
What follows is an escalating phase in which people recognize and articulate the incompatibility of their constructions of the euro crisis. Afterwards any further attempt at engaging with each other is aborted and the interaction is discontinued. Aborting an interaction might occur actively, when people explicitly discontinue their encounter. Alternatively, it might be passively forced on the interactants, in cases where their commenting practices violate discussion and community norms. In this case, moderators occasionally step in and terminate an interaction by deleting comments or even complete profiles. The typical courses that failing interactions take can be described through a shift from issue-oriented towards exclusively relation-oriented interactions. Interactions do not fail because of a lack of comments or commenters, as might be assumed for monological constructions. Instead, interactions break down after an interaction or an attempted interaction has already taken place. While commenters can only recognize the incompatibility of their constructions of the euro crisis in the context of issue-oriented commenting, they subsequently increasingly shift towards relation-oriented interactions in order to express this incompatibility. Commenters are, then, no longer engaging with each other’s constructions, but articulate their conflict with others, which eventually leads to the termination of their interaction altogether. That is why incompatible constructions in failing interactions are primarily characterised by relation-oriented interactions, especially disputes and reprimands. People criticise, discredit, insult and harass as well as backbite with regard to other people’s statements. While these commenting practices can involve high levels of incivility, the severity of the language used is not necessarily the primary reason why interactions fail. In some cases, people’s expectations about appropriate language in their online commenting diverges in such fundamental ways that their interactions are broken off. But as long as interaction partners do not mind the severity of the language employed, they can continue to engage in
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co-constructions of the euro crisis. In other cases, the language used might not be so extreme: criticism can also be expressed in relatively mild forms. But when the criticism is personal rather than aimed at the argument, constructions become incompatible and interactions are broken off.
8.3.1 Attackers Commenters taking on the role of attackers in failing interactions do not grant legitimacy to other constructions of the euro crisis. Instead of articulating dissent over the specifics of each other’s constructions, the other perspective is completely rejected. Attackers usually first engage in issue-oriented interactions by discussing and interpreting the issue at hand. They might position themselves in the crisis discourse, support and contradict previous statements or deduce how the crisis might develop. But in subsequent steps they tend to engage in relationoriented interactions by criticising, discrediting, insulting and harassing, as well as backbiting in their commenting practices. Thus, failing interactions commence as other types of interaction do: with a construction of the issue at hand. In fact multiple constructions might be articulated, but they stand parallel to each other with no common reference point. This is mostly due to people’s failure to consolidate their perspectives on the crisis in a way which makes mutual references possible. Instead, their constructions become the basis upon which commenters articulate their failing relations with each other until their interaction is broken off. Where dissent in co-constructions is oriented at mutually engaging with the euro crisis, people are here more concerned with denying any validity to the other person’s statements. This refusal to acknowledge the validity of an opponent’s statement prevents any further – let alone mutual – engagement with each other’s comments, as the following example from Der Standard demonstrates. The first commenter in this thread from Der Standard positions him- or herself as clearly against the European Union and deeper integration. The third commenter discredits the first person by addressing him or her as ‘FPÖ’. Another person steps in supporting the first commenter by asserting that anti-European and pro-FPÖ are not equivalent. The final comment in this interaction is from the second commenter, who uses very patronizing and insulting language directed at the previous commenter:
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Figure 8.25: Der Standard, 25 June 2012, ‘Der Kampf um die bedrohte Reisefreiheit’ First commenter: ‘“Quoted comment: Especially in times of great crisis, we do not need less but more Europe.” The euro is what brought the crisis on, less Europe is what is needed!’ Second commenter: ‘What, if you please, is a “crisis”?’ Third commenter: ‘Thank you for your opinion, FPÖ.’ Fourth commenter: ‘Anti EU does not equal pro FPÖ. You should open your mind a little!’ Second commenter: ‘My dear, the “arguments” made by EU adversaries are exactly the same as the “arguments” from the FPÖ. And besides, they are usually all nonsense. And an open mind – my dear, do you know the saying about stones in the glass house? When you’re just trying to distract with your stupid polemic, I’m still waiting for an explanation for your statement: “Anti EU does not equal pro FPÖ”. Because that sentence is wrong. What else do you like about the blues.’ [Translation by the author]
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No one in this thread really engages with their opponents’ perspectives. Instead, people attack, discredit and insult each other without engaging in any further constructions of the crisis or the European Union. In order to express the incompatibility of their perspectives on the crisis, commenters thus do not depend on articulating alternative constructions. Instead, they position themselves through insult, incivility and hostility. The following final phase of an interaction thread from The Guardian demonstrates this shift from issue-oriented towards increasingly relation-oriented interactions until the thread is broken off:
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Figure 8.26: The Guardian, 29 June 2012, ‘Eurozone crisis live’
In the initial phase of the interaction, one of the commenters asks for concrete facts and explanations regarding the other’s previous statement. They both voice a general projection for the Eurozone. One of them sees the Eurozone as racked with severe problems and possibly on the verge of collapse. The other considers that the rhetoric about the demise of the Eurozone has been overcome by the successful results of the EU crisis summit. Neither side considers the other’s projections to be viable. Eventually their interaction becomes preoccupied with their mutual rejection of each other’s perspectives. The third comment in this example particularly demonstrates the co-appearance of relation-oriented and issue-oriented commenting practices. The commenter starts by positioning himor herself with regard to previous comments about the crisis. But in the end, he or she insults the other interaction partner as a ‘whining type’ who probably
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doesn’t ‘really get it’. This thread does not escalate into severe forms of harassment or incivility. But even these rather mild forms of disapproving, criticising, discrediting and insulting display how these two commenters fail to consolidate or acknowledge the validity of each other’s perspectives in a way as to keep their mutual engagement with the crisis going. But it is important to point out that insults and incivility are not exclusive to failing interactions. They can equally occur in co-constructing interaction threads. As long as the euro crisis remains the primary focus, commenters continue to contribute new perspectives and work towards a shared construction of the euro crisis. While contrary to the discussion and community norms that providers inscribe into their interfaces, incivility does not inevitably prevent mutual engagement with a political and civic issue. This analysis, however, demonstrates that when attackers use incivility to target the messenger rather than their message, constructions of the euro crisis as a political and civic issue cease.
8.3.2 Admonishers The severity of insults and language varies significantly across the comment forums in this sample. The examples above engage in comparably mild forms of insults. The practices established within a given commenting space determine what commenters perceive as tolerable. In quite a few cases, people explicitly announce that they are terminating an interaction because they consider the language used to have overstepped a boundary. In these cases, commenters take on the role of admonishers by formulating commenting rules or by criticising and disapproving others and their statements based on the language they use rather than the content of their comments. In the following example from Charlemagne, one person seems to have been repeatedly insulted and discredited by others. In the comment below, he or she criticizes their behaviour as preventing a ‘serious debate’. Admonishers make explicit that there is a communicative crisis when interactions fail. They point out that interactions and engagement with the issue at hand are being disrupted because commenters disagree over the appropriateness of certain commenting practices:
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Figure 8.27: Charlemagne, 29 June 2012, ‘Less Disunion’
Consequently, admonishers do not engage in constructions of the issue. They rather articulate how mutual engagement with the crisis could or should be achieved. In a sense, admonishers articulate discussion norms just like providers do in their interface inscriptions. The Guardian states explicitly that people should take responsibility for the quality of their discussions in their comment section. Admonishers, who establish similar discussion norms as providers, could be considered as taking such responsibility. However, some admonishers might equally counteract provider interests by promoting incivility and hostility as a common and established form of commenting practice, as an example from the Guido Fawkes Twitter account demonstrates. Here, one person was shocked by the language people were using in the Guido Fawkes forum. Another person refers to this comment and mocks its author for not understanding how discussions at Guido Fawkes work: ‘Cannot help but feel that this newbie hasn’t *quite* got the hang of an @GuidoFawkes comment thread’. Many others follow the same line, eventually culminating in a tweet saying: ‘They didn’t even swear, it’s like they don’t know how the internet works at all’ (Guido Fawkes, Twitter thread, 27 June 2012). While these tweets were not included in this analysis, they demonstrate very well how people come
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to negotiate what they consider to be appropriate commenting practices - which can include incivility and hostility. Thus, the severity of the language that commenters use is not necessarily why interactions fail.
8.4
Civic communication in commenting interactions
This analysis has made the connection between typical interaction roles that could be identified in online commenting within this sample and the question of how commenters construct the euro crisis as a political and civic issue in their interactions. In this context, the notion of interaction roles is one way to describe the communicative forms of online commenting. The aim of this analysis was to address how online commenting can be considered as constituting forms of civic online communication. The results demonstrate that each interaction role implies a different approach to constructing the euro crisis as the political and civic issue under discussion in this analysis. Their distinction into monological constructions, co-constructions and incompatible constructions reveals that people continue to construct the issue under discussion even when their interactions diverge from the ideal conceptions concerning discussion norms and community discourse that providers implement within their commenting interfaces. Hence as long as people focus on the issue under discussion, commenting can still be considered relevant as a form of civic online communication. This is not to imply that only issue-oriented interactions and their related commenting practices are essential from a civic perspective. Quite the contrary, co-constructions depend on people engaging with each other and positioning themselves through their constructions of the issue at hand, for which relation-oriented commenting practices are crucial. Interactions are usually broken off and fail when the incompatibility of commenters’ constructions diverts attention from the issue at hand. In conclusion, the analysis yields two insights. First, it provides a nuanced perspective on the often one-sided discussion around the power of digital media technologies (Clark et al. 2014; Gillespie 2015) in shaping people’s commenting practices. The fact that people engage in commenting practices that in some cases explicitly contradict what providers anticipate exemplifies the conditional freedom with which people appropriate commenting interfaces. Second, it
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demonstrates how an analysis on the level of structures instead of content leads to insights about civic online communication. Despite providers’ quite explicit interface inscriptions, people avail themselves of what could be considered conditional freedom to act in divergent ways when commenting online. On the one hand, they show relative freedom and emancipation in establishing their own commenting practices. On the other hand, their practices are still pre-conditioned by the restrictions, options and guidelines that providers have inscribed into the interfaces. This becomes especially apparent when looking at how commenters co-construct the issue under discussion. Co-constructions most closely correspond with the interface inscriptions that providers put forward. Their ideal conceptions promote comments in which issue- and relation-oriented interactions are balanced and where people engage with each other, focus on their arguments and are open to new perspectives. In particular, the interaction roles of the supporter, the challenger and the contemplator correspond to these anticipations. They make use of feedback options, response buttons or subscriptions that the providers in this sample provide through their interfaces. Incompatible constructions illustrate at the same time how these functions can also be misappropriated. Attackers, for instance, use these functions to insult and harass others. In severe cases, providers can assert the limits of people’s freedom to appropriate commenting interfaces by deleting, editing or moderating people’s comments or even complete profiles. Nevertheless, commenters can be seen as acting tactically within the technologically pre-configured spaces of online commenting. They establish different approaches to constructing political and civic issues like the euro crisis in their commenting practices and in how they interact with other people. By doing so, they negotiate what kinds of spaces they constitute in their online commenting. That is why these insights provide an alternative perspective to the discussion on the power of platforms and of digital media technologies in general. They exemplify the socio-technical interrelation of commenting interfaces and commenting practices in creating digital spaces of civic communication. Due to its focus on the structural components of comment interactions, the analysis does not primarily focus on the content of comments. Instead, the analysis first and foremost asks in what ways people engage with an issue like the euro crisis in their online commenting. With its inductive approach, it does not only consider unlikely forms of online commenting as potentially relevant forms
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of civic online communication. By expressly not focusing on the substance of people’s viewpoints on the euro crisis, the analysis moreover carries less normative implications for how people should discuss political and civic issues in their commenting. My analysis picks up critiques of the continuing overemphasis on deliberative ideals in research on civic communication, which fails to recognize other significant forms of civic talk. Or as Stephen Coleman and Giles Moss (2012) have argued: ‘Content analyses of online discussions that dismiss the expression of anecdotes, sentiments, reminiscences, calls to action, or casual observations as if they were a devalued currency, incomparable with the deliberative gold standard of the well-made argument, references to authoritative data, and appeals to consensus, tell us no more than that researchers prefer certain modes of civic talk than others. They do not tell us which complex mix of expressive forms is most likely to explain antagonistic positions most clearly, inspire collective action, or generate feelings of solidarity.’ (Coleman and Moss 2012: 7) The above analysis has demonstrated that it is not necessarily essential for people to communicate in a civil and respectful manner in order to constitute commenting as a form of civic communication. Thus, comment interactions need not correspond with the discussion and community norms inscribed into the commenting interfaces. Dissent, even with severe forms of hostility and incivility, does not automatically mean the end of constructions of the euro crisis in longer interaction threads. Instead people demonstrate the ability to negotiate dissent in their online commenting. This ultimately depends on what each partner in an interaction considers appropriate commenting behaviour: if both agree that incivility and hostility can be typical in comments, the severity of their language need not prevent them from further constructing the euro crisis as the issue under discussion. If, however, their expectations of commenting practices come into conflict, interactions and consequently discussions of the euro crisis might fail. Yet in my analysis I have sought to move beyond Coleman and Moss’s conclusion. Not only is the limited focus on the well-made argument reductive for an analysis of online civic communication, but the sole focus on content at the expense of the structural elements in people’s online commenting undermines an analysis of civic communication beyond the specific communicative
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situation. Analysing communicative forms should, however, enable us to draw conclusions about the societies we live in more generally (Knoblauch 2013a: 306). By analysing the typical forms of civic communication in online commenting, the foregoing analysis thus equally intends to address what it means to act as citizens in increasingly mediatized societies and digital democracies. The analysis of online commenting is in that regard only one case among many in which people increasingly rely on digital media to engage in civic agency. Hence to conclude I shall discuss the concept of digital spaces of civic communication in order to demonstrate how the forms of online commenting are established both within the commenting interfaces as well as in people’s commenting practices. This socio-technical construction that underlies the digital spaces of civic communication in online commenting is representative of the conditions under which people act as citizens through media in modern democracies. For the case of online commenting, the analysis has demonstrated that people retain the ability to act in divergent and emancipated ways within the software interfaces of digital media. On the one hand, this ability should be considered a basic democratic principle, while on the other it also illustrates the responsibilities of the civic subject. Digital spaces of civic communication therefore need to be seen in their ambivalence as offering people opportunities to act as citizens in increasingly digital democracies, but also as relying on people to enact these spaces accordingly.
9
Conclusion: Digital spaces of civic communication
I set out to analyse in what ways the currently much-debated online commenting constitutes spaces for civic and political online communication in modern democracies. My intention therein was not simply to come to an evaluation of online commenting. Instead, I conceptualized online commenting as constituting digital spaces of civic communication in order to assess the socio-technical nature of digital media in offering communicative spaces where people can act as citizens. Following the theoretical discussion, I conceptualized digital spaces of civic communication as being actualized through the interrelation of strategically produced digital media interfaces and people’s related tactical digital media practices in their communication on civic and political issues. In the case of online commenting the concept accommodates the argument that both the providers of commenting interfaces as well as the people using these interfaces associate meaning with online commenting by establishing distinct forms of communication in their practices of production as well as appropriation. In other words, the concept offers a means to analyse how both commenting interfaces and commenting practices co-constitute forms of civic communication. Acknowledging that contemporary digital media are socio-technical constructs, which become constituted based on their underlying technologies as well as on people’s related digital media practices, has opened up a set of questions for contemporary democratic societies. Especially in times where digital media technologies are both seen as problem solver and problem cause, it seems important to consider not just the civic subject in an age of increasing digitization (Dahlberg 2011), but also the power that media technologies have for the constitution of civic agency in increasingly digital democracies and societies. By analysing the digital spaces of civic communication in online commenting I have specifically focused on what this socio-technical constitution of digital media means for people acting as citizens in contemporary societies.
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 A. Mollen, Digital Spaces of Civic Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0_9
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My dialectical approach to the analysis of commenting interfaces and people’s commenting practices demonstrates that while the commenting technology provides the infrastructure for people’s practices, it mostly does so in quite unrestrictive ways. Interface inscriptions are targeted at enabling and setting norms for commenting practices. Providers’ limited control thus exhibits the important role that people and their typical commenting practices play in the constitution of digital spaces of civic communication in online commenting. In communicative spaces where people can interact and communicate, the restraining quality of technologies should, therefore, not be overestimated – at least for the case of online commenting where providers themselves largely follow journalistic norms in offering spaces for civic communication. Providers of commenting interfaces even anticipate people’s divergent commenting practices when producing their interfaces. It is only in severe cases that they will restrictively limit people’s ability to communicate freely. Commenters thus establish their commenting practices relatively autonomously and partly irrespective of provider interests. But even when their practices do not correspond to the ideal conceptions that providers inscribe into their interfaces, as is often the case, their comments can still prove relevant as a form of civic communication. The analysis of typical commenting practices and interaction roles has demonstrated how unexpected forms of commenting might also be relevant for civic online communication. A detailed look at the findings from each empirical chapter further substantiates how a dialectical approach contributes to a discussion of the socio-technical constitution of digital spaces of civic communication. For the first level of analysis in a dialectical approach to the socio-technical constitution of online commenting, I focused on the commenting technology and thus on the level of the commenting interfaces. I firstly demonstrated that commenting interfaces are produced with specific meanings inscribed. Secondly, I revealed in what ways providers implement these meanings within the commenting interfaces. My analysis thus extends discussions of non-transparent software interfaces (Lammes 2016; Manovich 2001, cf. chapter 4) and meaningfully produced formative media technologies as put forward in the domestication approach, affordance theory and ANT (cf. chapter 3). Rather than simply postulating that interfaces are formative for people’s commenting practices, the analysis demonstrated how interfaces become formative: not primarily through severe
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forms of restriction, but rather by providing opportunities to act within the interface and by articulating guidelines for people to orient their commenting practices. Hence the analysis does not support the conception of technology and agency as being in strict binary opposition to each other, where the former controls and restricts the latter. Instead, the interface analysis demonstrates how the socio-technical constitution of digital media means the interrelation of technology and agency. This insight is notwithstanding a critical perspective on the power relation between providers of digital media technologies and the people using these technologies (cf. chapter 4 on de Certeau’s distinction between strategies and tactics). But it highlights the equally powerful position that people can assume in their practices of appropriation, even though providers of a technology will set a certain frame in which people have to act. The analysis furthermore provides insights into the differences and commonalities across the commenting interfaces in this sample. The detailed insights into the meanings and forms of inscriptions enabled the analysis to transcend mere technical descriptions of online commenting as social, reactive, short, and asynchronous (Reagle 2015: 2). Instead, the analysis provides grounds on which online commenting in a journalistic context can be distinguished from other forms of online commenting. By distinguishing informative, discursive, confined and volatile interfaces among the interfaces in the sample, I demonstrated the types of meanings providers associate with their technologies. Each type of interface is representative of the concrete ideas and anticipations that providers associate with people’s subsequent commenting practices. Informative and discursive interfaces promote engagement with the issue at hand, either through exchange with other commenters or by concentrating on a factual and informed discussion. Confined and volatile interfaces provide a communicative space in which people can briefly react to news media content or where they can discuss an issue within a small group of fellow commenters they already know. While the commenting interfaces in this sample have distinctive characteristics, providers share some underlying commonalities when it comes to implementing their interests. They articulate anticipations with regard to deliberative norms, community discourse, loyalty and distribution as well as legal and ethical liabilities. Commenting interfaces in which people can engage with news media
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or amateur journalistic content, be it within political blogs, social networking sites or news media websites, do not only articulate norms concerning how commenters should discuss the issue at hand or communicate with others. They also value commenting for its economic purpose, by introducing interface functions and norms that are likely to make people repeatedly return to their websites or share their content with other potential page visitors. But interface inscriptions relating to legal and ethical liabilities in particular already foresee that people will diverge from anticipations, often in such severe forms that providers feel obliged to legally indemnify themselves. Only in such severe forms will providers rely on restrictions, as opposed to options and guidelines, to control people’s commenting practices. To a large extent they rely on providing people with the opportunity to comment in the first place and on articulating guidelines that they would like to see upheld. This continuum of control in the forms in which providers inscribe their interests into the interfaces again demonstrates that the technology behind online commenting is not necessarily a restrictively controlling power that would leave people no room for alternative and autonomous ways of appropriation and sense-making. The second level of analysis in my dialectical approach to the sociotechnical constitution of online commenting considered the complete range of people’s commenting practices. As commenting practices I conceptualized the habitualized and routinized communicative acts (Reckwitz 2002: 249; Warde 2014: 283) that people engage in within the comment forums in my sample. By constituting what Goffman (1983) labelled the interaction order, people establish a specific tonality in their online commenting. Overall, I identified 30 different commenting practices that describe characteristic phenomena of online commenting in a journalistic context. Commenting practices thus describe how people established typical ways to make sense of and appropriate the commenting interfaces they encounter. In other words, they demonstrate people’s interpretive flexibility when encountering formative media technologies. Thus, the analysis on the one hand substantiates the position put forward by the domestication concept, affordance theory and ANT as consolidating approaches to the socio-technical constitution of digital media. They highlight people’s ability to engage in their own sense-making when encountering media technologies, even though these predefine a certain frame in which such practices of appropriation can occur. On the other hand, the analysis depicts how peo-
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ple’s interpretive flexibility can explicitly diverge from the anticipations that providers inscribe into their interfaces. With reference to Michel de Certeau, people’s commenting practices demonstrate how they appropriate the commenting interfaces as their own spaces partly through resistant tactics of appropriation (cf. chapter 4). By constituting a specific tonality in their practices people characterise in what ways online commenting establishes digital spaces of civic communication. A detailed look at the empirical results of the interaction analysis demonstrates that people constitute both social as well as issue spaces in their commenting practices. The commenting practices that people engage in can be differentiated as more relation- or more issue-oriented interactions. Relation-oriented interactions and their associated commenting practices tend not to be specifically addressed by the providers of commenting interfaces. In some cases, they might even be explicitly against provider interests. Nevertheless, they are important elements in constituting social spaces in online commenting in which people create opportunities for social encounters by presenting themselves as potential interaction partners and by establishing relations with each other. In small talk and phatic communication people might not refer to the topic at hand in any way. The related commenting practices are still relevant because they allow commenters to construct a commenting identity, to appear as a potential interaction partner, to address and potentially establish a relation with others. Jokes constitute relations between commenters in the same way. They might even refer loosely to the issue in question, but not in the sense of a factual and information-based discussion that providers envisage as an ideal type of commenting. Disputes are often explicitly contrary to provider inscriptions, repeatedly forcing them to engage in moderation and to heavily restrict people’s commenting practices. Here people interact intensely with each other, but mostly by attacking each other to varying degrees of severity. Reprimands signify how commenters articulate and stipulate the implicit rules for commenting in a respective forum, thereby jointly laying the ground for how their interactions should evolve. The commenting practices that people engage in within issue-oriented interactions can be aligned much more closely with provider inscriptions. With demarcations commenters engage with the issue by laying out what the issue entails for them. With interpretations commenters likewise engage in depth with the issue at hand by speculating about current developments in the overall issue
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context. In demarcations and interpretations commenters do not necessarily rely on interactions with others, but rather on close references to the original news media or blog content. Discussions necessarily combine the two – engagement with the issue at hand as well as interactions with other commenters. These manifold practices demonstrate the multifaceted nature of online commenting. It especially highlights that commenting constitutes both social and issue spaces in people’s practices. This interdependence of relation- and issue-orientation and their role in people’s civic communication becomes more explicit when considering how comment interactions evolve. On the third level of analysis I thus expressly went beyond an isolated view of the distinct practices that constitute the building blocks of people’s online commenting. Viewing the totality of commenting practices as a repertoire that commenters mix and match in their interactions exemplifies how people’s commenting can be considered a form of civic communication. The analysis of how people interact with each other on the euro crisis demonstrated that even comment interactions about a polarising political crisis situation do not automatically lead to a communicative crisis in online commenting. Instead, it shows how people construct the euro crisis as a political and civic issue in different ways. By focusing on the structural elements in people’s interaction rather than exclusively considering the content of their comments, the analysis has shown how people continue to engage with the euro crisis as a political and civic issue even when their interactions are not in accordance with provider anticipations. For the structural analysis of people’s online commenting, I have relied on the notion of objectivations as put forward in social and communicative constructivist approaches (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 76-79; Knoblauch 2013: 302-303). Objectivations describe how people can reach a mutual understanding in social encounters by orienting their actions and experiences along an established framework based on typicality (Luckmann 1986: 199). In this sample, people reach understandings on the euro crisis either within monological constructions, co-constructions or incompatible constructions. These different ways of constructing the euro crisis as a political and civic issue were distinguished based on the typical phases, courses and commenting practices of an interaction. In order to come to even more grounded insights into how people construct the euro crisis as a political and civic issue in their comment interactions I furthermore introduced the notion of interaction roles. Interaction roles are actor-centred, situa-
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tional and context-sensitive. The term indicates that commenters adopt certain roles in their interactions, which imply specific ways of constructing the euro crisis. In monological constructions evaluators, postulators and first-person narrators, for example, voice unchallenged constructions of the euro crisis. They engage with the euro crisis in general or in its specifics as portrayed in the primary input, but their comments are not reciprocated. Commenters might describe their perspectives on, interpretations and experiences of the crisis. But other commenters do not pick up these potential offers for interaction, as most providers would like to see. Commenters nevertheless construct the euro crisis as a political and civic issue in their comments. Co-constructions, on the other hand, are more aligned with provider interests. Here commenters act as supporters, challengers or contemplators to engage with other commenters in lengthy interactions on the euro crisis. They generally negotiate their dissenting perspectives on the euro crisis across multiple comments. Even though a political crisis like the euro crisis might trigger strong and sometimes even extreme expressions of dissent and disagreement, people continue to interact with each other. Their continuous interactions signify the joint construction of the euro crisis as a multifaceted political and civic issue. Only in incompatible constructions, when commenters take on the role of either attackers or admonishers, can we observe a communicative crisis when commenters cease to engage with each other and with the euro crisis as a political and civic issue. Here interactions between commenters fail, often because there is no common ground on which they could engage with each other or the crisis. Commenters in incompatible constructions do not grant legitimacy to another commenter’s constructions, or they reject their approach to commenting as inappropriate. In conclusion, the proposed dialectical approach to analysing online commenting has yielded insights into the socio-technical constitution of digital spaces of civic communication. The specific forms of civic online communication in online commenting become established based on providers’ interface inscriptions, the habitualized character of people’s commenting practices as well as the typical elements in people’s evolving comment interactions. Both the commenting technology as well as people’s commenting practices thus contribute to es-
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tablishing a framework for people’s experiences when acting as citizens in digital spaces of civic communication. For the field of media and communication studies, this analysis has demonstrated that moving beyond the level of content and focusing on the structural level of people’s communication can provide insights into how digital media technologies and people’s related media practices contribute to the constitution of social order in societies increasingly dependent on digital media technologies. Such an analysis on the micro-level of people’s everyday social encounters has a long tradition in studies of social interaction (Garfinkel 1967; Goffman 1972, 1981; Sacks et al. 1974), but needs to be adapted to an age where much of our communication evolves through digital media technologies that play a formative role in our interactions. It is then important to not only postulate that technologies matter for people’s communication, interaction and for the constitution of social order. Instead it seems worth attempting to analyse how and to what extent technologies come to matter. The results in this book demonstrate that a focus on the interrelation of digital media technologies and people’s related media practices can prove effective against an over-emphasis on the regulating power of digital media technologies. Acknowledging the socio-technical constitution of digital media, then, makes it possible to address how people’s ability to act as citizens in increasingly digital democracies is either shaped by the underlying technologies or independent of them. The analysis of communicative forms is central in this regard: ‘Communicative forms are the institutions of communication culture, that is, society as seen from within the actions by which it is constructed. Therefore, the structures of society are constructed by, and differ with respect to, communicative forms – be it the specific linguistic code, the materiality of the action or the technicality of its implementation. If we Skype, talk on the phone or write letters, it is the form of communicative action that ‘‘makes a difference.’’ However, this difference is not only a selection of codes but is a way for embodied actions to be performed in time and related to things. On the basis of these differences in performance, it is logical to assume that any societal difference depends on different enactments of communicative forms.’ (Knoblauch 2013: 306)
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The increasing reliance of people’s civic communication on digital media thus matters in the context of digital democracies. One central insight of this book, then, suggests that even though the technology of digital media is often addressed as the prime mover and shaker in today’s media landscape, people’s related and often divergent media practices should not go unrecognized in establishing the forms of civic online communication that come to characterize contemporary democracies. Yet many studies seem to focus primarily on the power of digital media technologies in shaping people’s media practices. Algorithms in particular have recently triggered great interest for their ability to set preconditions for people’s media practices specifically and for their engagement with media more broadly. There seems to be a fascination with algorithms’ automated procedures (Manovich 2013: 128) or their secondary agency (Mackenzie 2006: 7), which allows them to act upon or act in collaboration with people’s digital media practices (Niederer and van Dijck 2010). Restrictions and algorithms certainly play an incremental role in shaping our engagement with media. But even in the case of automation, the study of people’s media practices should not be sidelined by a strict focus on the digital media software itself. Acknowledging that digital media technologies are produced with specific meanings inscribed, however, enables a consideration of the interests and motives that providers might pursue when designing them. Such critical reflections are necessary considering that we increasingly depend on large media companies providing the infrastructures for our communication and everyday interactions. This focus on provider interests when producing the software interfaces of digital media technologies points at the same time to one of the limitations of this study. The providers of commenting interfaces are comparably very transparent about their interests in providing and designing their interfaces. They hold themselves accountable to democratic and civic norms, as they articulate in their guidelines, policies of use or terms and conditions. This openness concerning their own interests as well as the functionalities on their interfaces has made this analysis possible in the first place. Yet the interfaces that big media companies provide are becoming increasingly opaque as a research object. They can be extremely secretive about what their interfaces actually do and why they produce them in a specific way. At the same time, these interfaces might be much more restrictive in controlling people’s related practices than the software interfaces in
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this study. But even in these cases we nonetheless need to consider people’s practices of appropriation and sense-making. That is why in increasingly digital societies individuals do not only think with, through and alongside media (Hayles 2012). Their actions co-constitute those media technologies that play essential roles in our societies. How we use technologies therefore has wider societal consequences. For the case of online commenting the increase in online hate speech and abuse are perceived as symptoms of mounting levels of political radicalisation – especially in political crises like the euro crisis and the refugee crisis. Consequently, there is a strong political will to compel digital media companies to take responsibility for ensuring that human rights and dignity are upheld in their services. The current conflicts between political legislators and digital media companies thus highlight the fact that their services are exactly not neutral platforms. Instead political actors try to oblige digital media companies to prevent hate speech and online abuse by adjusting their technical features. In this case it is not a question of whether media companies can prevent people from communicating in certain ways, but a question about their responsibility to do so. Nonetheless, their power is limited in the face of the resistance of commenters, as ongoing online hate speech proves. While providers are now increasingly forced to ensure that online abuse does not happen within their website, for example, people continue to engage in it. Given that digital media constitute digital spaces of civic communication at the interrelation of interfaces and practices, regulation cannot solely occur on the level of technology. In that regard, the analysis has demonstrated for online commenting as a currently controversially debated phenomenon that it is essential not to overemphasise the role of technologies at the expense of people’s commenting practices. But the legislative attempts to prevent hate speech and other forms of undemocratic tendencies in digital media by European and national institutions mostly focus on the technological level. Here, regulation is primarily considered to be effective by holding media companies accountable. These companies in turn mainly look to alterations in their interfaces to prevent unwanted communicative phenomena. This focus on the technology, however, corresponds to digital media companies’ techno-deterministic and still partly techno-utopian terminology for what technology can do for our societies and our well-being. It does not always prove effective, which is why – as this analysis has shown - looking at technology to
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promote digital democracies can only be part of the answer. When countering phenomena like hate speech, implementing changes to the technology is a reactive measure to counter the harm that has already been done, rather like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. But for digital democracies and digital citizenship, people need to be educated to recognize that digital spaces of civic communication provide and demand the same rights and obligations as civic agency in general: ‘The key assumption here is that for a functioning democracy, there are certain conditions that reside at the level of lived experiences, cultural resources, and subjective dispositions that need to be met. While the formal institutions and processes of democracy are essential, not least the state itself, these structures and processes need to be populated by real-life people with democratic inclinations. […] The notion of civic virtue has a somewhat quaint, old-fashioned ring to it, but we should understand that it merely expresses a somewhat functional logic. […] It simply suggests that without certain kinds of inputs from citizens, the quality of democracy degenerates.’ (Dahlgren 2009: 104) This equally holds true for digital democracies and for digital forms of civic agency. Hence instead of over-emphasising the role of technologies in framing people’s ability to act as citizens in increasingly digital societies, the focus equally needs to be on the role of citizens. It must be addressed what people’s civic obligations and rights in digital democracies entail and how they can be educated to orient their actions accordingly. The commenting practices that people currently engage in, then, become the basis for subsequent enactments of citizenship in online settings. They provide orientation and thereby shape what we come to understand as civic agency within and through digital media. What forms of civic online agency become established thus to a large extent depends on people’s enactments. This means that there are no easy technological fixes to some problematic forms of online communication. But at the same time there is ample ground for countering phenomena that are currently discussed as endangering the enactment of citizenship in modern democracies and societies.
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Appendix
Appendix A: Interface functions as part of the interface analysis Interface function Addressing Archive Article information Being addressed Blocking Blog information Comment Comment evaluation Comment navigation and filter options Comment navigation buttons Comment posting button Comment references Comment time stamp commenting guidelines on Facebook Commenting rules Contacting news workers with information via SMS, MMS or email Content recommendations Customizing display options Deleted comments Display options: comment responses Display options: displaying primary input on Facebook with comments Display options: displaying reactions to primary input on Facebook Display options: filter content on Facebook Display options: opening comments Display options: sorting comments © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 A. Mollen, Digital Spaces of Civic Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27515-0
Groundedness 2 1 1 2 1 1 9 10 1 7 22 10 18 2 5 1 51 11 1 2 6 4 7 4 4
264
Donating Facebook account settings Facebook Advertising Facebook like button Facebook Notification about friend activities Facebook: Link to Facebook page Facebook: Recommending primary input + optional comment Facebook: Recommending primary input + optional comment Facebook: Recommending primary input + optional comment on personal Facebook page Facebook: Recommending primary input on Facebook page Facebook: Recommending primary input on personal Facebook page Feedback to news media on general questions via email Feedback to news media on primary inputs via email Feedback to news media via Facebook Feedback via interface form Flagging Friend requests google+ 1: posting link to primary input google+ 2: posting link and recommending primary input Information about news media on Facebook Letters to the editor Link to comments Link to community pages Link to external pages Link to Facebook page Link to Flattr (micro donations) Link to homepage Link to other blogs Link to other comment forums Link to other Facebook pages Link to other primary inputs Link to own comment forum
Appendix
2 1 1 5 1 7 5 4 1 3 4 4 4 1 4 7 1 2 5 2 2 18 1 11 1 2 1 4 3 2 56 4
Appendix
Link to personal profile page Link to primary input Link to public profile page Link to quote in primary input Mobile notifications News ticker Newsletter subscription Notification: new articles Notification: new comments Number follower Number of comments Number of Facebook reactions (shares, likes) Number of recommendations Number of responses Permalink Posting community Posting link on deli.cio.us Posting link on Digg Posting link on Reddit Posting link on StudiVZ Posting link on Windows Live Posting link on Xing Print Private messaging Profile evaluation Profile information Profile login Profile name Profile page Profile pictures Profile settings Purchasing license for re-publishing primary input Reader article Recommending Registration Repository of comments Response 1: comment response
265
5 8 4 1 1 9 11 1 2 2 14 3 7 4 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7 3 5 8 16 20 17 2 1 1 3 8 15 2 8
266
Response 2: citing comment in response Response 3: citing article in response Respository of deleted comments Ressorts RSS information RSS input Saving primary inputs Search Sending primary input via email Sharing Social Plug-Ins Terms of use Facebook Word limit in comment
Appendix
1 1 1 3 5 10 4 6 13 2 37 2 3
Appendix B: Provider anticipations regarding people’s commenting as part of the interface analysis Provider anticipation (Un)wanted commenting: block/remove users/followers vs. escalation (Un)wanted commenting: build posting communities (Un)wanted commenting: comment repetition (spamming) (Un)wanted commenting: Comments in English (Un)wanted commenting: commercial and advertising (Un)wanted commenting: copyright infringement (Un)wanted commenting: feedback users (Un)wanted commenting: find relevant content through filter (Un)wanted commenting: flag comments and users vs. escalation (Un)wanted commenting: illegal behaviour (Un)wanted commenting: lack of authenticity, disguising or impersonating vs. clear identification, no mutiple profiles (Un)wanted commenting: large amounts of comments/evaluations (flooding) vs. adequate comments
Groundedness 3 1 7 2 15 9 3 3 10 9 12
11
Appendix
(Un)wanted commenting: obscene, unvicil, abusive vs. respectful and considerate (Un)wanted commenting: off-topic/on-topic, relevant contributions (Un)wanted commenting: restrict other users from commenting (Un)wanted commenting: speculation, insinuation vs. arguments, proof. accountability (Un)wanted commenting: understandable, readable comments, avoid sms language (Un)wanted commenting: User privacy and data protection infringmenet, (Un)wanted commenting: viruses, malware (Un)wantend commenting: escalation vs. respectful and constructive critique Commenting purpose: community Commenting purpose: enabling and inviting dialogue, discussion Commenting purpose: feedback to news media Commenting purpose: interaction among users Legal liabilities: closing comments Legal liabilities: criminal prosecution Legal liabilities: distancing from posted content Legal liabilities: moderation necessary, legal coresponsibility Legal liabilities: Responsibilty remains with user Legal liabilities: secure to indemnify, hold harmless Legal liabilities: transfering rights to news media Provider principle: Deletion and Editing comments Provider principle: free speech, transparency about moderation Provider principle: Platforms handing responsibilty to site owners Provider principle: Promote valuable comments Provider principle: rules for moderation, user flagging Provider Principle: Terminate Access Provider principle: Users need to oblige to forum rules Provider principle: value of commenting
267
37 13 2 2 5 12 4 12 10 15 5 8 2 6 6 7 4 16 8 20 19 5 2 49 13 9 6
268
Appendix
Appendix C: Sample commenting threads for interaction analysis Forum
Primary Input
Publ. Date
Comments
1
Coun try GER
FB Bild
30 June 12
242
2
GER
FB SpOn
01 July 12
56
3
GER
FB SpOn
25 June 12
35
4
GER
FB SpOn
26 June 12
14
5
GER
FB SpOn
26 June 12
72
6
GER
FB SpOn
27 June 12
17
7
GER
01 July 12
127
8
GER
Irrfahrt im Fiskalsturm
26 June 12
81
9
GER
32
GER
29 June 12
90
11
GER
25 June 12
33
12
GER
Spiegel
26.05.12
96
13
GER
Spiegel
Demokratie, Austerität und die zwei Europas. Zypern - ein weiteres Opfer der Finanzkrise Alle Hoffnungen ruhen auf dem Plan der Vier Warum die Bürger über Europa abstimmen sollen Merkel lässt Monti
28 June 12
10
Spiegelfe chter Spiegelfe chter Spiegelfe chter Spiegelfe chter Spiegel
Teil-Niederlage beim EU-Gipfel: Merkel spaltet Europa/ Was sagt ihr zum Einknicken Merkels beim EU-Gipfel Euro-Gipfel. Italien und Spanien siegen im Verhandlungspoker. Perfekte Lösungen brauchen lange EUWachstumsrhetorik. Der Mogelpakt Interview mit Georg Soros: ‘Deutschland wird gehasst werden.’ Euro-Krise: Europas Mächtige treten an zum Streit-Gipfel. Krise der Institutionen
28 June 12
100
269
Appendix
14 15
GER GER
Spiegel Spiegel
16
GER
Spiegel
17
EU
18
EU
19
EU
20
EU
21
EU
22
EU
23
EU
24
EU
25
EU
26
EU
27
EU
28
EU
Charlem agne Charlem agne Charlem agne FB Financial Times FB Financial Times FB Financial Times FB Financial Times FB The Economi st FB The Economi st FB The Economi st FB The Economi st FB The Economi
abblitzen Die Klügere gab nach Der Rettungsfonds wird kein Selbstbedienungsladen Syrischer General flieht in die Türkei A delicate proposal
29 June 12 30 July 12
60 100
28 June 12
44
26 June 12
110
Less Disunion
29 June 12
85
Europe on the rack
30 June 12
124
Why Mario Monti needs to speak truth to power 12% rise for top bankers
25 June 12
157
26 June 12
144
Yet again the EU is about to hold a summit
26 June 12
43
It's EU summit day
27 June 12
6
The moral core
24 June 12
12
Gloom in Polderland
25 June 12
6
Powerful as well as dangerous
25 June 12
139
A delicate proposal
26 June 12
11
Tumbling towards the summit
26 June 12
6
270
Appendix
st FB The Economi st FB The Economi st FB The Economi st FB The Economi st FB The Economi st FB The Economi st Financial Times Financial Times Financial Times Financial Times Financial Times
29
EU
30
EU
31
EU
32
EU
33
EU
34
EU
35
EU
36
EU
37
EU
38
EU
39
EU
40
F
Sarkofra nce
41
F
Sarkofra nce
42
F
Sarkofra nce
When the chips are down
26 June 12
7
Angela's vision
27 June 12
33
The rube goldberg solution
27 June 12
17
Keeping it real
29 June 12
14
Victory in football, self-defeat in summit
29 June 12
19
Less Disunion
30 June 12
5
Cameron considers EU referendum How to shift Germany out of can't do mode The political test facing the Euro EU plan to rewrite Eurozone budgets More questions than answers after the summit Politique: trois visage d'un premier jour de juillet Le chiffre de la semaine: 130 millards d'Euro Pouvoir d'achat: 2012.... L'année perdu... Par Sarkozy?
01 July 12
31
25 June 12
170
28 June 12
22
26 June 12
89
29 June 12
76
01 July 12
4
24 June 12
5
28 June 12
7
271
Appendix
43
F
Sarkofra nce
44
F
45
F
FB Le Monde FB Le Monde
46
F
47
F
48
F
49
F
50
F
51
F
52
F
53
F
54
F
55
F
56
F
57
F
58
GB
FB Le Monde FB Le Monde FB Le Monde FB Libératio n FB Libératio n FB Libératio n Libératio n Libératio n Libératio n Libératio n Libératio n Libératio n FB BBC
269ème semaine politique: Hollande à l'offensive, l'UMP cherche ses valeurs Athène aurait triché
30 June 12
9
24 June 12
44
La périlleuse présidence européene de Chypre A Bruxelles Hollande veut que Paris s'apprète à recevoir Aung San Suu Kyi Un compromis a été trouvé Europe trop tard
26 June 12
14
28 June 12
32
28 June 12
8
28 June 12
7
27 June 12
37
A la une de Libération
29 June 12
115
La nuit où le Sud
29 June 12
24
Chypre appelle l'Europa à l'aide Ioula Timochenko
25 June 12
60
25 June 12
8
28 June 12
123
28 June 12
95
Au sommet de Bruxelles La nuit où le Sud
26 June 12
56
29 June 12
141
The baby box returns
26 June 12
109
Les choses vont bien entre Français et Allemands Promesses
272
Appendix
59
GB
Guido Fawkes Guido Fawkes Guido Fawkes Guido Fawkes Guido Fawkes
60
GB
61
GB
62
GB
63
GB
64
GB
Guardian
65
GB
Guardian
66 67
GB GB
Guardian Guardian
68
GB
Guardian
69
AT
70
AT
71
AT
FB Kurier FB Kurier FB Kurier
72
AT
73
AT
74
AT
75
AT
76
AT
FB Kurier FB Kurier FB Kurier FB Kurier FB
to Europe Read Guido in the daily star Sunday Make your mind up time Farage batters van Rompuy Full text of Tory MPs letter to Cameron 50 cross party MPs urge Lansley against plain packs Cyprus seeks Eurozone bail-out Leaders draft federal plan to save the eurozone Eurozone crisis live Cameron pledges referendum if EU demands more power The Euro – rebuilding Rome in a day Mehr Macht für EU in Brüssel Merkel ist tough und klug Österreicher trauen Faymann die Bewältigung nicht zu George Soros
01 July 12
120
26 June 12
48
03 July 12
147
28 June 12
62
29 June 12
89
25 June 12
158
26 June 12
100
29 June 12 30 June 12
122 97
30 June 12
95
01 July 12
2
02 July 12
2
25 June 12
2
27 June 12
3
Mehr Macht der EU
27 June 12
2
Eurozone beschließt Bankenaufsicht Kritik an Merkel
29 June 12
2
30 June 12
1
Freie Binnengrenzen
25 June 12
2
273
Appendix
Standard FB Standard FB Standard FB Standard
77
AT
78
AT
79
AT
80
AT
FS Misik
81 82
AT AT
83
AT
84
AT
85
AT
FS Misik Der Standard Der Standard Der Standard Der Standard
86
AT
87
AT
88
AT
89
AT
Der Standard Der Standard Der Standard Der Standard
Zypern stellt Antrag auf EU-Hilfen Einserkastl Europa
25 June 12
5
29 June 12
2
Merkel beugt sich Druck von Italien und Spanien Angela Merkel, die gefährlichste Frau der Welt Terror der Ökonomie Kampf um Reisefreiheit Europa ohne Euro wäre Rückschritt Den Finanzmärkten droht der Kollaps Nur eine Stabilitätsunion kann den Euro retten Ein Lob für Faymann und Spindelegger Europa für Stammtische Märkte prügeln Eurounion herbei Merkel knickt vor Spanien und Italien ein
29 June 12
2
01 July 12
145
24 June 12 24 June 12
191 50
25 June 12
38
26 June 12
100
26 June 12
85
27 June 12
55
27 June 12
34
29 June 12
131
29 June 12
97