Online commentators really do seem to be racist and misogynistic

Probably not a huge surprise, but the Grauniad has analysed comments left on its website, and found that women and black writers get the worst comments.

Quote:

Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the “top 10”, one was Muslim and one Jewish. And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men. How should digital news organisations respond to this? Some say it is simple – “Don’t read the comments” or, better still, switch them off altogether. And many have done just that, disabling their comment threads for good because they became too taxing to bother with. But in so many cases journalism is enriched by responses from its readers. So why disable all comments when only a small minority is a problem? ... The Guardian has already taken the decision to cut down the number of places where comments are open on stories relating to a few particularly contentious subjects, such as migration and race. This allows moderators to keep a closer watch on conversations that we know are more likely to attract abuse. However, unlike many news sites, the Guardian has no plans to close comments altogether. For the most part, Guardian readers enrich the journalism. Only 2% of comments are blocked (a further 2% are deleted because they are spam or replies to blocked comments); the majority are respectful and many are wonderful. A good comment thread is a joy to read – and more common than the “don’t read the comments” detractors believe.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1WpBYfM