A US court has ruled that an American blogger cannot be anonymous and is legally accountable for the comments on their blog. Meanwhile, the Olympic Delivery Authority has asked a community blog to remove comments left on their blog concerning one of their employees. Bloggers are legally responsible for the content they publish.
But convention is that blogs are judged by the person writing them rather than those reading them- much the same as a speech is judged by the speaker as opposed to the audience they attract. We like to congregate on blogs that are busy, lively places and the hierarchy of blogs rests heavily on those which are most widely read. That’s odd. One of the key differences between a blog and a newspaper op-ed is the relationship between the writer and the audience. Blogs are meant to be more discursive, iterative spaces where the blogger listens and learns, not just informs and speaks.
On the biggest blogs, the author moderates comments in order (partly) to limit their potential legal liability. However, it is rare that they read all of the comments they receive. Robert Peston and Nick Robinson appear to have all but given up on engaging with the comments on their blogs. Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes do occasionally enter the fray but it’s not a guaranteed way of entering a dialogue with the author.
On these blogs the tone is often confrontational, aggressive, conspiratorial and strident. They are also off-topic and often uninformative – identifying the funny, informative comments is hard work. Is that because the commenters know that they are not being watched?
There’s no appetite for bloggers extensively moderating their comments. The internet is profoundly biased in favour of freedom of expression and any sign of censorship usually leads to a dramatic loss of audience. But does that mean that successful blogs have to put up with irrelevant, daft or unpleasant comments?
There are blogs where the comments are generally constructive and thoughtful. Whilst many of these have a small readership, they don’t all. Matthew Taylor’s blog, one of those I know best, has a readership approaching 10,000 a month and rarely attractives invective (and often only when people confuse him with being a Cornwall MP. Matthew doesn’t respond to every comment – and commenters more often engage with each other. But it’s a welcoming, open space.
If I invite you to attend a performance of my local drama club, I wouldn’t expect you to judge me by the audience. But if I invite you to my birthday party, I would expect some judgement on the company that I keep. And if you ask any teacher, leave a group to its own devices and it will set its own rules. But lead that group or community, and you can shape it and influence its norms.
Blogs are just a communications medium and bad practice should not weaken the very best blogs in the same way that Big Brother doesn’t tarnish my view of The Wire. But as the medium matures, perhaps we should refine the criteria by which we select where we want to hang out. We choose our local pubs more selectively than picking the one with the largest number of punters. And we pass judgement on people by the company they keep. Perhaps its time for a greater range of criteria by which readers choose their blogs – and in turn a greater responsibility placed on bloggers to take responsibility for the behaviour of their community.