Why Trolls Win With Toxic Comments

Hugh Pickens writes "The Web is a place for unlimited exchange of ideas. But according to an NPR report, researchers have found that rude comments on articles can change the way we interpret the news. 'It's a little bit like the Wild West. The trolls are winning,' says Dominique Brossard, co-author of the study on the so-called 'Nasty Effect.' Researchers worked with a science writer to construct a balanced news story on the pros and cons of nanotechnology, a topic chosen so that readers would have to make sense of a complicated issue with low familiarity. They then asked 1,183 subjects to review the blog post from a Canadian newspaper that discussed the water contamination risks of nanosilver particles and the antibacterial benefits. Half saw the story with polite comments, and the other half saw rude comments, like: 'If you don't see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you're an idiot.' People that were exposed to the polite comments didn't change their views really about the issue covering the story, while the people that did see the rude comments became polarized — they became more against the technology that was covered in the story. Brossard says we need to have an anchor to make sense of complicated issues. 'And it seems that rudeness and incivility is used as a mental shortcut to make sense of those complicated issues.' Brossard says there's no quick fix for this issue (PDF), and while she thinks it's important to foster conversation through comments sections, every media organization has to figure out where to draw the line when comments get out of control. 'It's possible that the social norms in this brave new domain will change once more — with users shunning meanspirited attacks from posters hiding behind pseudonyms and cultivating civil debate instead,' writes Brossard. 'Until then, beware the nasty effect.'"

Comments

Re:Why do they have comments on news sites?

[roman_mir]

Why shouldn't they?

I don't want to use FB for example, so I don't. At the same time I sometimes want to leave a comment for any article that I read on the Internet, but most of the time (actually almost all of the time today) the requirement is to login with one of the following: FB, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, MS something... I don't like giving any of my information and I don't have an FB or Twitter, so I don't post.

When a site allows its own registration mechanism (or when AC is allowed), I can post. Now, I don't troll (I know many people on this site will disagree), I can express my opinion but I don't troll even if you think my opinion is a troll in itself. So now by getting rid of their own registration mechanism they cut off my input and I leave even though I would have posted the comment otherwise, and so they are deprived of a comment that I would post, which would not be a troll under any circumstances unless that's what some people believe, because their opinion on the issue differs.

The people who want to troll log in with one of those accounts, they don't care.

Re:Freeze them out.

[Kjella]

Would the moderator on crack please let me know what the hell in that can be construed as "Flamebait"? The only opinion of my own I offered was:

The real destroyers of the discussion aren't usually strictly speaking trolls, they're people with an extreme black-and-white point of view who'll attack anyone with a dissenting opinion with the intensity of a pit bull with rabies. They're often met by their equal and opposite and together they'll churn out 100 posts drowning out any discussion by anyone with the slightest hint of seeing both sides of the argument.

The rest of the post are actual examples from reality I've run into who have been drowning out discussion elsewhere, if that's flamebait to you well then take your problem up with reality.