Blog Post #2: The Ethos of Commenters

For the first blog post, we were concerned with the ethos of the author, the creator of the post. But for many blogs, the author is not the only one who gets to "speak" on the post. A lot of blogs allow readers of the post to comment on the post, and when a blog is popular enough, the readers who comment can become an important presence on the blog, forming a community whose opinions and values are at least as important as the blog owners'.

We can get a sense of the ethos of posters and commenters through a number of different elements:

• screen names: is there a name attached to the post, or is the person posting anonymously, with no identity at all? If there's a name identifying the speaker of the words, is it a real legal name, or a pseudonym that looks like a real name? Or is it a pseudonym that looks made up, that expresses something that the speaker feels about his or her identity? We get a different sense of authority or credibility when opinions are attributed to "SexyVampire123" instead of "Julie Smith, PhD."
• avatars: some blogs allow commenters to use a graphical representation of themselves, and that can carry information, as we've discussed already.
• ranking systems: some blogs allow the use of voting or "likes" or other means of indicating how popular a post or poster might be, or how important other readers in the community think the words are.
• grammar and style: we get a different sense of an author's intelligence or professionalism depending on such issues as proper grammar, slang or swearing, textspeak or emoticons, and other features of writing.
• tone: we might judge a speaker's credibility or even mental state by how much emotion and what types of emotion seem to come through in the writing; someone who sounds neutral and objective might seem more rational, or maybe heartless and coldblooded, where someone who rants and raves might seem less stable or irrational, or might seem more emotionally engaged in the topic.
• use of other sources: if a poster includes links or images or quotes, then we might judge that person to be more trustworthy, more concerned with letting us judge for ourselves.

These are just some of the ways that we might get a sense of the authority, credibility, and motives of both posters and commenters.

I'm linking to a post at a blog called Feministe, which covers a variety of topics of interest to different kinds of feminists; it's a blog with a large community, consisting of a handful of posters, some of whom identify with real names and talk about their roles in society outside of the blogosphere, and a very high number of readers, some of whom comment on almost every post and have formed "relationships" with each other. This particular post contains very little in the way of text, and seems to have been intended, by its original poster, to be a light-hearted mockery of the fashions worn by attendees at Will and Kate's royal wedding. Here's a screencap of the original post:

 I cropped the image to focus on a couple of elements: the post itself, which was one brief paragraph and a picture, the middle box which provides information about the poster, including the large number of posts she's contributed to the site, and the date she started posting, and finally the box introducing the comments, which shows that this very silly little post somehow generated 226 responses.

Jill is in fact the main poster of the site, and identifies herself with her actual legal name on the site. The information about the number of posts and the date she started posting suggest that she has some authority and credibility as a longtime and established poster, especially if you look at other profiles of other posts on the site for a comparison.

The number of comments suggests that for some reason, this post struck a nerve and provoked a lot of people to comment on the hat in the picture. So let's take a look at some of the comments. Here's the first few:

You can see that people on this site use avatars and screen names, and that their posts at first seem to play along with the joke mocking the hat. They also have a sense of community, as the post by PrettyAmiable responds to Angus' post. The posts continue in this vein for some time, as people joke with each other, share pop culture knowledge, and sometimes get off topic, indicating that they feel comfortable communicating with each other in a conversation.

And then, another commenter changes the tone:

Notice the antagonistic tone, directed explicitly at "Americans", setting up an us v. them argument: on one side, Yonmei the Brit who wants to talk about government repression and politics, and on the other side, the silly American commenters on the blog who can't see the serious matters because they're all joking about a hat.

The topic changes pretty much completely after that, to a serious argument about the monarchy, poverty, anti-American attitudes around the globe, the value of protest, etc.

Notice how these commenters are now including links to support their views. The language changes: there's a lot less swearing and joking around, more carefully constructed sentences and advanced vocabulary.

As the comment count continues to rise, commenters turn against each other, and the attacks become more personal, elevating to the status of a flamewar: the topic isn't even important anymore. What's become important is that some members of the community want to defend that community at all costs against outsiders:

And that's only halfway through the comments!

One silly post turns into a broader discussion about what feminist blogs should be discussing, and how. That this is an issue that comes up regularly on the blog is indicated in the following response by Jill, the blog owner and original poster (or OP):

Try scrolling through some of the other comments to see how the arguments, plural, play out. Think about whose side you feel like you might be "on" and why: is it something about the tone, about the language, about the screen name or avatar that influences you? Do commenters seem to be ganging up on Yonmei? Defending Jill? What specific phrases do commenters use that make you feel that way?

For your second blog post, choose a blog post on any subject, as long as it has a decent comment section (so a blog that doesn't allow comments at all won't work for this one). It doesn't need to have a debate like this one, as long as you can get a sense of "who" the commenters are and how they feel about the topic.

Write a brief blog post describing your response to those commenters, about what kind of people you think they might be, whether their points are convincing, who you feel most comfortable reading and who makes you feel somewhat uncomfortable. Try to pinpoint what details are causing you to react as you are, focusing on their avatars, screen names, language (tone, grammar, use of emoticons, etc). Look at how commenters are treated by other commenters; can you tell whether someone is comfortable with the blog community, or is an outsider to it? Do commenters seem to defend some people and attack others?

Provide a link to the post, and include some screencaps of the comments, as I've done here, to illustrate your points. Or quote some of the words in the comments instead. In two weeks, I'll post another blog post, so make sure you've got yours up on the blog by then!