Online discussion threads as promotors of citizen democracy: Current opportunities and challenges for small- and medium-sized media organisations in Finland

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| 12 mars 2024

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Type of user-generated content or dialogue in discussion thread	Deliberative norms applied by moderating journalists
Arguments between users.	Friendly reminders about discussion tone.
Criticism towards other users, topics, or interviewees in the published journalistic product or the media organisation.	Friendly reminders about discussion tone, acknowledgement of negative criticism, facts-based clarifications.
Questions/corrections about the journalistic product or media organisation activities.	Facts-based clarifications, and a respectful tone, sincerity, and honesty in responses and corrections.

Potential challenge	Extent of challenge	How the challenge affects citizen democracy
Uncivility, hate speech, or dark participation in user-generated comments.	Minor problem. Some degree of uncivil content present in threads. Hate speech not present.	Disrespectful or mean-spirited comments hamper user participation or interactivity.
Lack of citizen representativeness among active commenters.	Major problem. Certain age and gender groups dominate discussions. Certain individuals repeat and argue in similar ways across threads.	A majority of citizens see discussions as biased and repetitive, and irrelevant for them.
Lack of time or economical resources for journalistic moderation of discussion threads.	Major problem. Organisation size requires prioritisation. Moderation not prioritised in relation to other news production tasks.	Pre-publication moderation and post-publication interaction toward sustainable discussions suffer. Lack of peer support creates discrepancies in moderation decisions between co-workers.

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Sujets de la revue:: Social Sciences, Communication Science, Mass Communication, Public and Political Communication