Emerging practices for managing user misconduct in online news media comments sections

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to bridge a gap in knowledge on the professional information practices of a group of people whose daily work of managing user-generated content online exposes them to users whom they perceive as acting aggressively or otherwise offensively online. Design/methodology/approach Journalists’ narratives of practices for managing and responding to user comments perceived as offensive are analysed qualitatively. For this purpose, ten interviews with journalists from nine different news organisations in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Canada were conducted. Findings The study finds that the environment in which the journalists work plays a vital role in the evolution of the practices. Practices, indissolubly tied to the contexts or sites in which people’s activities take place, are conditioned by moral values, traditions and collective experiences which journalists enact through the practice they engage in when they are dealing with user posts online. The site, conceived as an information landscape, is that of the newsroom. Practices for managing users online evolve through actors participating in a process of learning and their ability to adopt the cultural norms and values of their environment. Originality/value This study sheds light on the mechanisms behind the evolution of practices for handling user-generated content online and it reports on the importance of properties such as norms, values and emotions for how things are done in the information landscape of news journalism.