Controlling the Conversation

Reader commenting forums of online newspaper sites allow newsreaders the opportunity to participate in an online conversation about the news topic at hand. By providing the forums, journalists diffuse part of their gatekeeping responsibilities to non-journalist commenters, empowering them as secondary gatekeepers to decide what content appears alongside the news. To encourage constructive dialogue, however, virtually all comment-hosting newspapers require that online reader commenters remain civil in their comments. They recognize that incivility in the forums is toxic to their brand identity and serves to antagonize, polarize and silence the very readers they are trying to attract. To combat this, newspapers have developed strategies aimed at reducing incivility, including prohibiting anonymity or disallowing the forums altogether. In reasserting their agenda-setting and gatekeeping role in discouraging incivility, newspapers appear to be adopting a new strategy, as yet unquantified. In an examination of 2100 news stories from 50 US newspapers using a constructed-week sampling method, this research investigates the extent to which some news topics are more likely than others to appear with a commenting forum. Findings reveal that controversial news stories are more likely to appear without a commenting forum than non-controversial news stories, adding a new dimension to newspapers' ability to set the public agenda.