The Journalist at the Pub
© Isabelle Bonenkamp
It is the 4th of February and I just posted another guide into the Facebook group for international students in Aarhus. It is an article about how to help refugees in Denmark and unlike after previous posts, I am quite uncertain about what the reactions will be like. Refugees as a topic are quite delicate – many news sites I know closed down their commenting section because of the harassment.
Then I read my own comments.
"Sure. Let's help the refugees. Then let's watch together how they abuse women in broad daylight. Let alone other violent behaviour against random people on the street. Looks like a great deal, right? Forget about it,“ wrote a user called Radu and received 17 likes.
I scroll down further.
“WW III. Syrians in Europe.”
Someone calls me a Refuphiliac: “And to describe those peoples' state of mind, I coined a term: Refuphilia -- an irrational (possibly dangerous) empathy towards a person who is supposedly a refugee. Sufferers of this mania often desire to greet as many refugees in their counties as possible - usually endangering their country. Refuphilia can be recognized if a person's point of view is based only on empathy, and not on rationality. Refuphiliacs almost always ignore facts and arguments, and are often willing to label their opponents as racist or bigots.“
There were many other like him. There were many more responding to it. 11 shares, 95 likes – 33 main comments and too many sub comments to count. It made the guide the most clicked article on Jutlandstation.dk that year.
I admit it could have been worse – I have seen worse – but it felt strange to me that a neutral guide where to engage in civil society, written down in the least emotional and biased manner possible, would cause so strong reactions. Especially among international students.
This is when I started being interested in the implications that social media has on journalism. How can I distance myself professionally from reactions made in a network where I act as a private person?
Changes in the profession of journalism...
The digital age has changed the profession of journalism in many ways: one of them is the constant contact with the readers in the world wide web. Amy Binns, Senior Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, describes it as “a successful pub”: the comment section on online news platforms and social media can generate a lively debate, containing constructive critiques and a fruitful exchange, not only for the reader but also for the journalist. But “an interactive site” may as well “carry the seeds for trouble“ – Cyberharassment is a part of the daily routine as well.
According to the Pew Research Center, four in ten Internet users are victims of online harassment and The Guardian just released an article about their own research titled “The dark side of Guardian comments” about online abuse. Abuse was defined as either “threats to kill, rape or maim” and/or – less extreme – the “demeaning and insulting speech targeted at the writer of the article or another comment”. The Guardian automatically blocks these abuses, as do many other news platforms, but not all of them. Besides, the digital workplace of a journalist goes beyond online newspapers: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Blogs, Instagram are equally important to the daily business of an online journalist.
... and the consequences
The importance of social media for the distribution of news is growing steadily. Therefore media houses increasingly provide their employees with social media guidelines but these do not protect from online abuse.
“Media organizations are woefully unprepared for this type of activity and also need training in providing appropriate support”, furthermore, “online harassment is often dismissed by law enforcement and frequently ignored by the platforms that enable the abuse” says Michelle Ferrier, the founder of TrollBusters - an “online pest control for women writers” where victims can report incidents of cyberharassment.
Trolls are in this sense, the abusers themselves. According to Amy Binns, they are the result of what research on online behaviour considers as the consequence of online communication: “the loss of self-awareness, sense of impunity and likelihood upon normally inhibited impulses.”
How to aggregate
Problematically is that many news outlets and social media platforms also profit from the traffic, no matter how harmful. Asking the key question ‘What works best on Facebook?’ before creating content is rather the rule than the exception. The Huffington post for example uses real-time testing of headlines to gain more readers.
The logic behind is simple:
Trick the algorithm. Be on top. Win the war of information.
Former New York times executive editor Bill Keller called Arianna Huffington “The queen of aggregation” for having found out “that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your website and add left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come.” He concluded that in times of momentous news this kind of aggregation was needed and could be the solution for serious journalism to enjoy a renaissance.
New “alternative” reporting emerges
He might be right: One commentator under my refugee post was backing up his statement with a news article from “The new observer online - unique news, unique views” found last September 2015. Their editorial policy is to fight against the “politically correct perversions of the English language” such as calling homosexuals gay or illegal immigrants not illegal immigrants. Their readers believe that description for a refugee would be “illegal invaders” and “Third World colonizers.” – they have stopped trusting in originals newspapers and no one convinced them to re-trust in the “lying press”. They are students and foreigners in Denmark, like me.
Therefore, in order to re-establish trust in conventional newsrooms in an age where everyone can find only the information they want and only be reached by numbers of clicks and distribution all over the web, contact with the audience seems be inevitable and necessary.
A chance for deliberative democracy?
Normatively seen, this is an opportunity. Ilka Jacobs from the Department of Communication at the University of Mainz argues that thanks to the internet the interchange between communicator and recipient is now fluid - thus making a political change in role for the recipient possible. Finally, deliberative democracy 2.0 there it is. Would Habermas be happy?
But when reality meets expectations things look differently.
“Don’t read the comments!” Maggie Downs tells me. She had written a personal story about how she went into labour and tested positive for meth. Writer for the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post among others, her post on Narratively got shared all over the web – 17000 times on Facebook – rewritten and republished. The comments are everywhere, it is hard to avoid them, but she is afraid.
„Imagine going to work every day and walking through a gauntlet of 100 people saying ‘You're stupid’, ‘You're terrible’, ‘You suck’, ‘I can't believe you get paid for this’. It's a terrible way to go to work“, says the Guardian writer Jessica Valenti.
It could have an impact on the news we read
Looking at evidence from psychology about the effects of destructive feedback, social norms and research about how people deal with the pressure from groups to conform to a common standard, the question arises what the comments might do to journalistic work. Could they play into the creation of online news content?
In 1991 the professor David Pritchard from the University of Wisconsin and Dan Berkowitz, Professor at the University of Iowa, having analysed 10 newspapers from 1948-1978, published their findings about the influence reader’s letters had on newspapers and editors in Journalism Quarterly. Yet, most analysis about what influences the news is approached from a normative angle that upholds an ideal of journalism.
Objectivity, Independence, Non-intervention.
It automatically excludes applying the laws of human behaviour to it. Wolfgang Donsbach, a well-known figure in the International Communication association and former professor at the University of Dresden (he died in July 2015 consequent to a heart attack) called this a “a normative bias in communication research.” It would portray the actual process of news selection and writing as a black box as it leaves out the psychological level.
But I am not a black box.
I remember that my how to help refugees guide was three times as long and way more biased before it came out. It was my reaction to all the hateful comments against refugees I had read on other news sites. My editor stopped the original post from being published, we had a fight, I changed it – now I am grateful. My journalistic integrity was at stake.
Comments had influenced me. No should, would, might, could – they did influence what I wrote and how I wrote it. That is the opposite of accurate, impartial reporting.
The human side of journalism
According to Donsbach, empirical evidence would make it very clear that the individual predisposition of a journalist influences his reporting. Consequently, he states that what applies to all human beings also should be applied to journalists as well. Journalists constantly have to decide what is true, what is relevant and how to judge it, under time pressure, pressure of competition, lack of objective criteria and publicness, leaving them as human beings in a permanently uncertain situation. Humans – and so do journalists – get along with uncertain situations by validating themselves through group orientation – social influence.
So, what are comments if not social influence? What is happening in a successful pub and for what else should we have a lively debate for if it is not meant to influence us?
Who reads what: it matters
It is known that comments do influence the way the other readers perceive the article and or the trustworthiness of the news website. Adam Felder, the director of digital analytics at Atlantic Media, asked 100 Americans to read an article – half of them saw the article alone, the other half some of the comments below as well. “Respondents who saw comments evaluated the article as being of lower quality. In other words, authors are judged not just by what they write, but by how people respond.”
Ultimately, it all seems to depend on whether the comments are read or not.
Do journalists read their comments?
I decided to ask and create a Google form questionnaire. Now, after 39 questions in total and more than a 1000 Emails sent out, I can say that only one of my 62 responding journalists said he would never read the comments under his post. Indeed, most of my respondents read the comments out of pure interest.
However, 56,9% already experienced their comment section to get out of control. 25,9% have already been frightened because of a comment and 37,9% already once informed someone because of a threatening comment.
Asking about the effects the comments could have on their work practice, 67,2% admitted that it happens they express themselves more carefully about certain topics because of previous negative comments. 53,4% admitted that they have not posted about certain topics a second time because of previous negative comments. 55,2% said they changed their angle towards a certain subject at least once because of the comments.
With regard to their opinion, 73,7% said it can happen that it gets strengthened in defiance of negative comments; while 93% say positive comments can strengthen their opinion on the topic covered, too.
Apparently, the comments can influence the news in terms of expression, agenda setting, angle, opinion, distraction and psychological impact on the journalist.
A matter of preparation
It is a common fear that minority topics will be reported about less due to online harassment in the future. Considering that women and minorities are the most likely victims to trolling the idea is not without case. On the other hand, this is just one side of the picture.
One respondent wrote as well: “When you don't get comments or people liking what you wrote then just know there is a problem.“ Not everyone suffers from the negativity: In fact, when asking the journalists how they deal with negative and insulting comments, they react very differently. The answers range from "I feel bad for days", "I've told my psychiatrist" to "I try to ignore them“, "I laugh at them", "I continue my work“ and "I don’t read them unprepared". Apparently, dealing with the comments in the right way for oneself can be a matter or preparation and predisposition. Journalism schools therefore could consider integrating online communication, social media and psychology into one of their courses so their students will be prepared adequately.
Furthermore, as much as it is considered a bias to think a journalist always could be inhumanely impartial, it might be a bias to expect the entire population on earth to agree on one common sense. The Internet connects everyone that lives on the planet – that is a lot of opinions.
When I entered the pub last February I wish I had been aware of it. I wish I had prepared in order to win with the better argument. Instead, I was shocked and remained in silence. I did not expect it to happen. I did not know how to connect my private person to my professional writing adequately. Next time I might know better. Above all, I know I am not the only one who struggles.
