The Dynamics of Commenting on a Political Blog

Last year, I came upon some political web sites with areas where people can comment on the articles on the site. Being new to this type of interaction, I found it to be quite amazing. There was now a spot where people with differing political views could come and share their ideas and debate the issues. In theory it is a great idea. In practice, however, it leaves a lot to be desired.

There are several different types of posters that post comments on these sites:

The “trolls.” Those are the people that come on and will post something incendiary or provocative in an attempt to disrupt the thread. A troll never responds to the replies that his or her posts generates and the comment is usually quite brief; one or two sentences at most.

The “argumentative regulars.” These are the posters that come onto the site on a regular basis. They are the ones that seem to be on the site the most. They are also what I would consider to be the alpha posters. The argumentative regulars can be divided into two camps: the ones that agree with the bias of the site, whether it is liberal or conservative, and those that oppose that bias. These two different factions know each other and come onto the site for the express purpose of antagonizing the other side. They will get into running arguments that are always off-topic and eat up a lot of thread space. This makes it difficult for anyone else to post comments and replies to comments. These people are actually more disruptive than the trolls, though I don’t think they would see it that way. They have all been banned multiple times, only to show up later with a different moniker, sometimes within minutes, and get back into the fray.

The “regulars.” These are the people that come on to the site on a regular basis to voice their opinions and have discussions and debates about the topics of the day. These people rarely engage either the trolls or the argumentative regulars, but instead will mostly engage the other regulars there. Most of what they post is on topic, and generally educational.

The “community regulars.” These are the people that come onto the site almost expressly for the online community of the place. Their posts are mostly off-topic and directed at the other community regulars on the site. They are there mostly just for the conversation, trying to turn the thread into their own little chat room.

The “reply regulars.” These are the people that come on the site, and mostly only reply to other comments, rarely offering anything new or substantial to the conversation. They are the ones that want to be part of the community though they don’t have anything to say really.

Not all posters fit into only one category. Most of the posters are in different categories at different times. Though their strongest tendencies tend to be in one category or the other.

The interactions between these different posters create some interesting dynamics on the threads. The argumentative regulars are driven by ego and the need to be right. They like to dominate the conversation, no matter what it is. They always seem to have a wealth of information at their fingertips that they can bring to bear at any time. The information they provide, however, is almost always “cherry-picked” information slanted towards their particular view.

One of the most cherry-picked bits of information is poll numbers. When the polls are in their favor, they will cite them while the other side will say that polls don’t matter and vice versa. This is a never-ending game with these posters.

Another one of the interesting dynamics is the mob mentality. When one of the argumentative posters, (the alphas), attacks someone for whatever reason, a lot of the others will join in on that attack whether they know the reason for the original attack or not.

I have seen these attacks take place a lot and always figured that there was a reason for those attacks. The attackers must know the ones being attacked and their personalities. I have come to realize though, that that is not always the case.

After witnessing these attacks take place over a period of several months I discovered something disturbing. I was posting on another thread and one of the posters that seemed to get attacked a lot was posting there as well. He/she made a comment that I deemed to be misinformed and so replied to it with some more information showing how their original post was incorrect. This commenting and replying went back and forth for quite awhile. His/her arguments were well reasoned and seemed to be well thought out. They just didn’t have all of the information to make an informed decision. After I had this experience with several different posters, I surmised that maybe the reason they were getting attacked on the other threads was simply because they had a difference of opinion.

To test my theory that these posters were being attacked because they expressed a different opinion, I created several different monikers and went on these blogs and expressed a different opinion from that of the regular posters. My opinion wasn’t inflammatory, or designed to disrupt the thread, it was just a difference of opinion.

As soon as the comment posted, the regulars pounced. I was called different names like troll, right-winger, dumb ass to name just a few. And when one regular poster would attack, several others would join in on the attack. These posters exhibited all of the signs of mob mentality.

As I tried to defend myself, (keep in mind here, I was purposely remaining non-confrontational throughout the exchanges), more and more posters joined in, all the while getting more and more rude. They kept it up until I was literally run off of the thread. Every time I came onto the board with a different moniker and posted a differing opinion, I was met with the same behavior.

To make sure that it wasn’t just me that was having this problem, I enlisted the help of a couple of other long-time posters and asked them to replicate the experiment. They did and they had the same outcome as I.

I think there are a couple of different things happening here. The posters get into a certain frame of mind, a persona if you will. Everything they see posted will be filtered through this framework. They are so used to being attacked, or seeing others attacked they perceive any difference of opinion as a personal attack upon themselves and so respond accordingly. The other thing that might be happening is a certain sense of superiority. The posters see the thread as their “private domain” and the resent anyone that comes in to disrupt their little kingdom.

Some of these types of behavior are running off people who might otherwise be posting on these sites. It is a problem common to most blogs where I have posted. I don’t know what can be done to stop this, or even if anything can. So I decided to write this article in hopes that some might see it and realize what they are doing to others by their actions. Maybe they should stop and think before posting something and realize that they really don’t know who is on the other side of the computer screen.