Fostering Civil Discourse Around Local News on Reddit

Seeing the need to foster a more robust, civil discourse around current events, I worked with journalists from The Dallas Morning News to create a step-by-step guide for small to medium-sized local newsrooms looking to create meaningful discussion with readers, specifically on Reddit. This is part one of a two-part how-to series that dives into how newsrooms have leveraged the platform to cultivate civil discourse amongst various online communities and is intended to serve as a guide in establishing a presence for your newsroom on the “front page of the internet”.

Exploring Engagement

In a digital age where newspapers are hemorrhaging resources, the up and coming emphasis on audience engagement has been met with the buzz of hope and optimism across the industry. While its definition is not concrete, web analytics platform Parse.ly best explains engagement as “gaining your audience’s interest and capturing their attention enough to elicit a central and emotional response to cause them to be committed to your product, service, or idea and take an action now or in the future”. Described by journalist and engagement extraordinaire, Mónica Guzmán, as “not a product created by journalists and delivered to an audience” but an “open, public conversation”, creating a conscience, tangible, and trackable interaction with readers has become a dire process for newsrooms looking to expand their digital presence and boost subscribership. The end result, however, is more than a new subscriber, but a relationship; more importantly, the acquaintance of readers’ trust.

News as an “open, public conversation” is the reality of living in what Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, calls “the Age of Acceleration”, in his 2016 publication, Thank You for Being Late. The evolution of digital media has resulted in discomfort and struggle among an array of American industries, specifically the press. By failing to understand what it means to effectively reach audiences in the digital age, modern day journalism continuously fails to meet its purpose: informing and educating the public by reporting current events to a community.

Industry leadership has advised that only through mastering the art of audience engagement on new mediums can a free and thriving press sustain, but effectively engaging with virtual audiences is only becoming more difficult, as the nationwide value of civil discourse struggles to survive in a time of historically low incivility.

Engagement on Social Platforms

In a 2018 study from Pew Research Center, two-thirds of Americans reported getting their news from social media, making it crucial for any newsroom, even those that are small and local, to be actively engaging with users on social platforms. Over half of those individuals interviewed by Pew, however, reported their newsfeed to be “largely inaccurate”, further emphasizing the importance of newsrooms working to improve their approach behind these seemingly commonplace, virtual interactions and fostering trust in journalism.

For smaller, local newsrooms, the demand is even higher. In the same study, Pew found that while 71% of Americans believe that local news is doing well, financially, only 14% had paid for local news, within the past year, and journalists know this disconnect all too well with employment dropping by almost a quarter within the last ten years. Activating a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account for a small newsroom, however, is no simple fix to a lack meaningful dialogue with consumers. These online mediums, while familiar, have not always proved to be fruitful for healthy discussion.

Defining Discourse

With a global audience, social media serves as the virtual market for promoting political agenda and activism, of all kinds. As of July 2018, 69 percent of social media users believe the space plays a crucial role in “getting elected officials to pay attention to issues” and 67 percent agree its rise has contributed to “creating sustained movements for social change”(Pew Research Center 2018). The expansion of online dialogue has allowed similar individuals to connect, around the world. for a collective purpose. Twitter, for example, became the platform of historic movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. With millions of users pushing vastly opposing perspectives, on the same platform, however, social networking as a medium has the potential to continue to foster hostility and strife among users.

And users have felt this way for years.

According to a study done by Pew Research Center, in 2016, users reported political discourse on these platforms as “less respectful, less likely to come to a resolution, and less civil compared with other places people might discuss politics”. Although the average user may confidently boast their personal agenda online, a general consensus finds these platforms to be a poor space to converse with others, especially in regard to more controversial subject matters, such as politics. These conflicting truths ask the question of why individuals would feel encouraged to advocate trivial ideals in a space they know will likely face criticism?

In 2014, journalism students from Indiana University explored hypotheses of whether social media facilitates or attenuates polarization. One hypothesis proposed that users are likely to consume mostly like-minded points of view, “leading them to form more extreme opinions in the direction of their original inclinations, thanks to the characteristics of online space, such as more choices in media sources and networks and more effective filtering tools”(Journal of Communication 2014). The evolution of the digital publishing industry has led to a boom in terms of the number of publications, presenting citizens with a wide array of options to get perspectives from. The study supports the argument that users consume content that will encourage the individual’s pre-established beliefs.

Reviving Civility Online

According to Director of Audience at the Arizona Republic, Kim Bui, a decline in productive discourse sends the message to journalists, not to step away, but to step up to critical standards set by readers and prove the worth of their work. “I do think now in the current political climate, people are really concerned about news and freedom of the press and will subscribe if we prove our worth to them,” says Bui. “That’s part of being on social media… to be where they are and prove that we’re worth it. We’re worth that 10 bucks a month or however much.”

“Cultivating loyal, paying readers is a conundrum journalists like McClatchy Regional Growth Editor Cal Lundmark knows all too well.It’s a task readily discussed but rarely executed. “That’s kind of where we’re at in the business right now”, says Lundmark, a Regional Growth Editor for McClatchy, referring to the reduced staff and funding experienced by most newsrooms that hampers reporting efforts let alone engagement. “There’s a lot of very almost life or death sentence decisions to make. And I don’t know if there are people kind of in our corner of the industry that are loud enough or influential enough to really make a case for why what we [engagement journalists] do is important”.

In attempts to sustain profitable journalism, audience engagement practices must be iterated on and experimented with to foster meaningful dialogue with digital consumers. And experts have been looking to expand beyond embattled social media platforms Facebook and Twitter.

Introducing Reddit

Reddit, known as the “front page of the internet” since 2005, once existed as a primitive social network for trolling and meme humor. With 330 million users worldwide, however, newsrooms which have been trailblazers of engagement journalism have begun to explore this new frontier. Reddit, which is unique from other popular social networks, has been credited with the potential to be the saving grace of civil discourse online.

How it works

A self-described haven to “thousands of communities, endless conversation and authentic human connection”, Reddit exists to foster civil online discourse among users known as Redditors. Divided up into individual channels known as subreddits, like-minded Redditors may post, commnet, and approve/disapprove content via an up or down vote. What truly sets Reddit apart from other social mediums is the platform’s strict policies regarding moderation. With each subreddit hosting its own collection of unique rules, or “community guidelines”, volunteer moderators can ensure their channel maintains the tone and focus they feel is important to the community; an efficient alternative to staff-funded or automatic moderation.

Still interested? Check out part two, how local newsrooms can begin talking to readers on Reddit.