Leimi tõrjumise põhimõtted toimetustes
Files
Date
2007
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
The goal of this thesis was to explore with the help of interviews and content analysis,
how do the workers of three major newspapers – Postimees, SL Õhtuleht and Eesti
Päevaleht – regard commenting and moderating. The main questions are: if, how
much, how often and on what bases do the editors remove unbecoming comments
from their commentaryrooms and what do the removed comments have in common.
The keywords of this baccalaureate thesis are “flame,” “comments,”
“commentators,” “moderators,” “moderating” and “unbecoming comments.”
Two editors from each edition, all together six people were interviewed. The
interviews were carried out at SL Õhtuleht and Postimees in the spring of 2006 and at
Eesti Päevaleht one year later. In addition two employees of Postimees answered in
writing to some additional questions. The results of the interviews showed that all
editions have their own way of approach to moderating and commentaries. For
example, the workers at SL Õhtuleht don´t regard to moderating as their first priority,
they remove as much as needed and as few as possible of the unbecoming comments.
On the other hand, Eesti Päevaleht has been paying a lot of attention to the quality of
their comments, in the beginning of 2005 they took into service the system of
registrated users and it has been quite successful at its purpose, but in May 2007 they
decided to change their commenting system open to all readers. This thesis observs
the period when only registrated users could use the benefit of commenting. For about
a year Postimees has been using the system of voluntary moderators, where readers
can become moderators and remove unbecoming comments. The editors at Postimees
and Eesti Päevaleht think that commenting has a surplus value and it should not be
taken advantage of.
The interviews also showed that online news sites do not have separate moderators,
moderating is a part of the editors everyday job and they are quite content with it. The
editors at SL Õhtuleht and Postimees check the reported comments few times during
the day and voluntary moderators at Postimees check the total flow of comments, but the editors at Eesti Päevaleht keep their eye on all of the comments. The quantity of
removed unbecoming comments depends on the actual articles, but on the average the
editors remove up to 20-30 comments per day, exept for Eesti Päevaleht, where the
maximum is five comments per day. The readers of SL Õhtuleht and Postimees use
the opportunity to report of unbecoming comments score of times during the day, but
only third of the reports are justified because people have different values and they
react differently. It also became obvious that editors use their common sense as they
remove unbecoming comments, Postimees and Eesti Päevaleht use the filter of
forbidden words, but only to some extent. If it becomes a habbit of a certain
commentator to post unbecoming comments, the editors have the oportunity of
blocking the address of that commentator. SL Õhtuleht and Postimees use that choice
only as temporary shocktherapy, but Eesti Päevaleht blocks the address permanently.
Editors think that blocking the IP-address is enough punishment for the commentators
and the police should intervene only in extreme situations, for example when a
commentator posts frequently comments that are hostile, contain deaththreats or false
information. Comments need to be monitored more closely in the case of articles that
are about death, jewes, Russia and drastic politicians.
The unbecoming comments that were removed from the online news sites during
seven days were analyzed with content analysis. The quantity of comments removed
was quite different: SL Õhtuleht removed 96, Postimees 92 and Eesti Päevaleht only 6
comments during one week. The reason for this drastic difference is that only
registered readers can comment on articles in Eesti Päevaleht and because of that they
behave much better. The results of the content analysis showed that editors removed
the unbecoming comments mostly from the Estonian news section, but Entertainment
was also popular. A lot of comments were removed from articles concerning police or
politics, local and global celebrities were also under attack. Readers prefer to use as
their alias names that are describing (gives a hint of their status, nationality, feelings,
political preferences), nicknames or proper names. The average lenght of the removed
comments was 24 words and they were mostly agressive towards the characters or the
contents of the articles.
Keywords
bakalaureusetööd, meedia, uus meedia, võrguväljaanded, toimetused, kommentaarid, laim