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Free Press vs. Free Speech? The Rhetoric of ''Civility'' in Regard to Anonymous Online Comments
Bill Reader Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly published online 22 May 2012 DOI: 10.1177/1077699012447923 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/05/22/1077699012447923 A more recent version of this article was published on - Aug 16, 2012

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447923
rJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 2012

JMCXXX10.1177/1077699012447923Reade

Free Press vs. Free Speech? The Rhetoric of Civility in Regard to Anonymous Online Comments
Bill Reader1

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly XX(X) 119 2012 AEJMC Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1077699012447923 http://jmcq.sagepub.com

Abstract This study explores the issue of civility in anonymous comments posted to news media websites. A textual analysis of journalistic essays about the issue and more than 900 audience-member responses to those essays suggests a disconnect between professional journalists and most forum participants over the purpose of such virtual village squares, particularly with regard to the role of anonymity. Using the theoretical framework of concordance, the analysis suggests that journalists and audiences have very different conceptualizations about civility and the role of anonymity in civil discourse. Keywords anonymity, comments, concordance, feedback Audience-feedback forums have been fixtures of the U.S. news media for centuries, but todays online comment forums on news media websites have greatly expanded the dynamism of the marketplace of ideas. Traditional feedback forums were heavily managededitors selected letters to the editor to publish, and often edited those selections for length or grammar. As such, published letters to the editor became products of journalistic gatekeeping, and the resulting forums often were more reflective of what journalists wanted than of what the writing public desired.1

Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

Corresponding Author: Bill Reader, Ohio University, 102 Scripps Hall, Ohio University, Athens, OH, 45701, USA Email: reader@ohio.edu

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With online forums, the gatekeeping has largely disappearedanybody can post a comment in any manner and on any topic, often without any prescreening by editors. Anonymity also is common in online forums, unlike letters to the editor forums, most of which have required signatures since the mid-twentieth century.2 In recent years, a number of high-profile journalists have raised strong objections to the anonymous nature of online forums, and some have publicly equated anonymous commentary with incivility. Examples include demands for banning anonymous comments entirely, argued in high-profile and broadly circulated essays by Pulitzer-winning columnists Leonard Pitts Jr.3 and Connie Schultz,4 and by industry watchers such as American Journalism Review editor Rem Rieder.5 Bans have been instituted by some media, such as the Voice of San Diego,6 and the Buffalo News.7 Other media that are trying to address incivility concerns without instituting outright bans on anonymous posts include the Washington Post, the New York Times, BusinessWeek, and other news media of varying sizes.8 This study uses qualitative textual analysis in the critical-cultural tradition to study the antianonymity arguments made by some prominent U.S. journalists, and compares those arguments against reader responses to those same essays.9 The essays and responses were all published in mid-2010, when the topic appeared high on the agenda of professional journalists. The method is a culturally grounded approach to critical textual analysis.10 This analysis works within the theoretical framework of hegemonic concordance suggested by Condit, who reasoned that the dominant hegemony of controversial issues often reflects the most dominant opposing arguments, rather than a single hegemonic viewpoint.11 (A simplistic example of that could be the ongoing debate over gunownership laws in the United States, which is most often cast in the media as a polarizing fight between radicalized gun rights and gun control camps, and not as a broad and complicated social issue centered on moderated views of self-defense and community safety.) The concordance framework provides a useful guide for analyzing contentious discourse between stakeholders in a debate, and seems especially apropos for analyzing dialogue between journalists and members of their audience on matters of journalistic practice.

Literature Review: Anonymity in Society and in Journalism

Within modern journalism in the United States, disagreement over anonymous commentary seemed to begin in the mid-twentieth century, first regarding unsigned letters to the editor,12 and later over anonymous call-in opinion features.13 Those debates often focused on three key issues: avoiding libel, improving the quality of feedback forums, and pursuing an idealistic notion of democracyissues that appear to be raised in the contemporary industry discourse about anonymity in online comment forums.

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With regard to libel, the law in the United States cares little whether an opinion is anonymous, and is focused only on the opinion itself. Anonymous speech has strong constitutional protections in the United States, as noted in a 1995 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.14 With regard to online forums, the 1996 Communication Decency Act also is mum about anonymity, but rather gives news media broad immunity from being held responsible for libelous third-party comments posted to their websites.15 Another antianonymity argument is an assumption that requiring signatures leads to submissions that are more in line with the quality standards of professional journalism.16 The quality goal may have been achieved by requiring names with letters, but perhaps at the cost of egalitarianism; research has shown that requiring names to be published with opinions in the United States correlates with the forums being dominated by white, middle-class males who are generally better educated and more socioeconomically secure than the general population.17 A more recent study suggests the same for online comment forumsa survey of online forum participants at eighty U.S. newspaper websites found that respondents were mostly middle-aged males who were well established in their communities.18 There appears to be no published empirical research into whether must-sign policies actually do result in higher-quality submissions. Another antianonymity argument from many journalists has been that unsigned commentary somehow violates the principles of free speech in democracy, which also is a point of considerable dispute.19 In the United States, anonymity has been directly tied to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution; in the 1995 McIntyre v. Ohio Supreme Court decision, Justice John Paul Stevens, in the majority opinion, wrote, Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliationand their ideas from suppressionat the hand of an intolerant society.20 Illustrating that position further is the fact that many of the architects of the Bill of Rights debated the principles and practicalities of free speech via essays published under a variety of pseudonyms, and the true identity of some of those influential authors remains uncertain.21 It is clear from the literature that many journalists and journalism scholars consider anonymous writing itself to be inherently unethical, regardless of its legal protections.22 That attitude appears to be a strong professional bias within the industry, one reinforced by anecdotes of obvious abuses of anonymity. However, anonymity itself is ethically neutral. Many people, when allowed to act anonymously, may be predisposed to selfishness, criminal behaviors, and other antisocial acts.23 Other research has found that anonymity also can enable charitable and altruistic behaviors among people.24 Considered as a whole, such research suggests that anonymity is clearly harmful in certain contexts (e.g., modern-day witch trials), is useful or even necessary in others (e.g., medical research), and is simply a matter of personal choice in many other contexts (e.g., charitable giving). The anonymous nature of online opinion forums likely crosses all three of those conditions. Anonymity can curb social inhibitions and result in highly offensive

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rhetoric from some writersthat reality appears to be the oft-expressed dominant assumption in both the journalism profession and the academy, and as such it is a given that does not need further explication here. Conversely, strong antianonymity biases may obscure the possible benefits of anonymity. For example, anonymity may ensure broader participation in such forumsthat has been found to be the case, for example, with online discussion forums focused on specific health issues,25 minority politics in Chile,26 and criticisms within China of that countrys central government.27 Even in societies with strong free speech traditions, anonymity in online forums may encourage participation by people who are unwilling to be identified, either out of fear of serious repercussions (such as workplace retaliation) or, more generally, to counteract individuals fear of social isolation resulting from expression of minority opinions, what Noelle-Neumann termed the spiral of silence.28 In addition, research suggests that anonymous discourse can result in collective action that is illustrative of social and cultural phenomena. Wright and Street argue that anonymous online forums not only facilitate discourse on issues, but also enable the discursive tactic of thwarting deliberation (in an online news forum, that could be in the form of a particularly nasty and rude comment discouraging others from participating).29 On the other hand, participants could collectively challenge and castigate the writers of abusive comments. Kaigo and Watanabe found an online forum to be selfregulating: posts of questionable morality were routinely denounced and marginalized by other commentators, such that the user community functioned pro-socially in an uncontrolled, anonymous Internet forum.30 Tanner found that participants in a Chilean forum collectively agreed on the terms of deliberation: In this public space, the forum participants were doing more than just sending in letters to the editor. They were debating with each other and creating standards of civility for the online interchanges.31 Complicating the overall issue is that anonymity itself is polysemic. Kennedy contends that a persons anonymous online identity is still an extension of the offline self.32 Anonymity also can mean different things, from the mere lack of visual identifiers (the proverbial name without a face), to the adoption of alternate personae via online pseudonyms and avatars, to the expression of ideas without any identifying information at all.33 The latter, arguably the most pure form of anonymous commentary, is certainly subject to abuse in communicative settings, but it also is the foundation of encouraging unfiltered honesty from people, such as encouraging college students to be honest about their experiences with eating disorders,34 or encouraging physicians to be frank about their use of euthanasia-like treatments.35 In most cases, scholarly research involving humans not only benefits from, but requires, anonymity. By extension, the use of anonymous sources in news reports remains prevalent in the news industry, albeit controversially.36 The fact that many professional journalists use anonymous sources in their own works, but then decry anonymous commentary aimed at those works, is the inspiration for this study.

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Theoretical Framework
Stuart Hall put forth the idea that the interpretation of media messages can follow essentially three paths: the dominant or preferred meaning, the negotiated position, or the oppositional position.37 That categorization is overly simplistic, of coursethe construction of meaning is not quite so tidy in a complex society, and the construction of a dominant hegemonic ideology is even less so. That complexity is what inspired Condits concept of concordancethe suggestion that hegemony in the modern world is not simply top-down from the dominant power structures, but is constructed via accommodation by the most recognized opposing sides in various debates.38 Condit contended that good public discourse is maximally polyvocal, and good public policy must incorporate, hence accommodate, all agents, rather than representing a single interest.39 That polyvocal process certainly does not include all stakeholders, nor does it result in truly egalitarian results, as Condit acknowledged: Concord is neither harmonious nor inevitably fair or equitable; it is simply the best that can be done under the circumstances.40 Given the complexity of society, Condit argued that critical theorists must not focus just on the rhetoric of a single dominant force, but rather describe the plurivocal nature of public discourse . . . by exploring how the texts articulate to the interests of multiple groups.41 That is, hegemony is not simply a top-down influence from the single most powerful institution, but rather a complex product of deliberation among different influential hegemons. Condits theory has its critics, some of whom suggest the concordance model is perhaps too abstract to be useful.42 However, it has been applied to several interesting and useful mass communication studies over the past decade, particularly studies focused on media coverage of divisive issues.43 The framework seems especially suitable for a critical analysis of the issue of anonymous commentary online, as the forums themselves are (ostensibly) intended to be locations for pluralistic debate on all manner of issuesthus, the regulation of those forums might need to be even more accommodating of varied minority viewpoints, including viewpoints that may be considered on the fringes of acceptability.

Method
This study is guided by two research goals that have not been satisfactorily addressed by the existing literature. The first focuses on the dominant opinions of high-profile journalists with regard to anonymity in online forums. The second focuses on the attitudes of forum participants themselves. This study analyzed six high-profile journalistic essays about anonymous online comments and the 1,320 responses to those texts, 927 of which were identified as being focused enough on the topic at hand to be germane to this study.44 The six journalistic essays selected for this study were published in spring and summer 2010, and

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many are cross-referential to one another. There were two timely news hooks for the essays: first, recent decisions by some newspapers to end anonymous commenting on their online forums,45 and, second, a high-profile incident in which the Cleveland Plain Dealer revealed that a local judge may have been commenting anonymously to newspaper articles about cases under that judges jurisdiction.46 The concurrence of those essays provided a unique opportunity to study a public discussion among journalists regarding journalism practice and the publics response to that discussion. Two of the essays studied were mentioned in the introduction, the columns by Pitts of the Miami Herald and Schultz of the Plain Dealer; the responses to those essays were drawn from the columnists home newspapers (169 responses to Pitts and 215 to Schultz). Two more essays were featured in publications with notoriety across the United States, the Boston Globe and Salon.com (69 responses to the Globe, 174 to Salon.com). The remaining two were from influential regional newspapers, the Buffalo News (which drew 641 comments) and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (52 comments). After collecting the texts, the researcher conducted what Hall identified as an initial soak in the material.47 The texts then were categorized using Halls three approaches to interpretation (dominant hegemonic, oppositional, or negotiated). That was followed by a series of readings and rereadings to identify, challenge, and codify overarching themes, recurring rhetorical devices, narrative tropes, and the like, a process that spanned six months. The final analysis was conducted in three stages. First, the journalists original essays were analyzed; second, the responses were analyzed; and third, the two bodies of texts were analyzed as a whole.

Journalists Perspectives
Overall, the journalists arguments focused on the negative aspects of anonymity and gave short shrift to, or glossed over, legitimate reasons for anonymity in comment forums. Both Schultz and Pitts called for outright bans of anonymous comments. The Buffalo News essay from editor Margaret Sullivan announced her newspaper would indeed ban anonymous comments.48 In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, columnist Eugene Kane referred to Schultzs column and asked his readers to weigh in with Ban Anonymous Comments? The Conversation Begins.49 In the Boston Globe, analyst Jesse Singal called for measures other than banning anonymous comments (Anonymous Online Comment Boards Can Be Obnoxious, but Eliminating Them Is a Mistake).50 For Salon.com, Matt Zoller Seitz defended anonymous comments in an essay titled Why I Like Vicious, Anonymous Online CommentsAs News Outlets Push Back against Trolls, We May Be Losing Something: A Glimpse of the Real America.51 Many themes were discerned from those texts, but the three most explicit are outlined below. 1. Anonymity as filth. All six journalists explicitly stated that online forums are tainted by anonymous comments and equated anonymous comments with filth. Pitts described comment forums as cesspools that have become havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our

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propriety.52 Sullivan also evoked the rhetoric of filth: In some recent cases . . . weve taken the more extreme measure of not offering commenting at all on stories that seemed most likely to descend into the gutter.53 For Salon.com, Seitz wrote that anonymous comments shows us the American id in all its snaggletoothed, pustulent [sic] glory.54 And in the Boston Globe, Singal argued, Anonymous flame throwers spew hateful vitriol, some of it racist, while those who wish to participate in meaningful debate see their contributions drowned in a sea of trash.55 The journalists use of loaded terms such as gutter, cesspool, trash, brain farts, crudity, and pustulant reveals a strong disdain toward anonymity, as they do not imply the even-handedness of more constructive criticisms such as inappropriate or out of bounds or not suitable for publicationterms that could have challenged the particularly offensive statements without suggesting that all anonymous opinions are inherently worthless. In their essays, the journalists argued that anonymity itself is repugnant. 2. Dehumanizing the trolls. The journalists also used a number of derogatory terms when referring to anonymous writers. The use of such descriptors as reptilian, swine, and, of course, troll56 goes a step further than devaluing anonymous opinions; it denigratesin fact dehumanizesanonymous writers themselves. Such rhetoric goes beyond other terms the journalists used, such as haters and bigots, which focus on objectionable statements without dehumanizing the writers who made those statements. The use of dehumanizing rhetoric to describe anonymous writers suggests the journalists may have feelings of enmity toward anonymous writers in general. 3. Protecting the village square. Furthermore, the trolls are not cast as unpleasant individuals to be avoided, but rather as enemies to be opposed and cast out. The essays reflect a decades-old journalistic meme that audience feedback forums are intended to be public spaces for polite, articulate discourse, the romanticized ideal of the village square.57 Singal suggested that online forums had not lived up to the village square metaphor, but instead had become something of a virtual O.K. Corral.58 Pitts lamented that, originally, online newspaper forums must have seemed an inspiration kissed by the spirit of Jefferson: a free public space where each of us could have his or her say.59 In announcing the Buffalo News would be banning anonymous commenting, Sullivan wrote, The aim of publishing reader comments, all along, has been to have a free-flowing discussion of stimulating and worthwhile ideassomething of a virtual village square. Now that peoples names will be attached to their ideas, were hoping that aim, finally, will be achieved.60 The essays suggest that those idealized virtual village squares are somehow under attack and must be defended against the trolls. The analogies to military and police action are explicit in the essays. Singal suggested, [Banning anonymity is] the wrong move, the proverbial rocket launcher employed against a housefly. . . . A better solution is for newspapers to simply step up enforcement of their existing comments guidelines, and to quickly and mercilessly delete the comments and ban the IP addresses of serial abusive commenters.61 Schultz also used the rhetoric of defense: There are columns I no longer write because I wont subject vulnerable people

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whove never before been interviewed to the online attacks of anonymous trolls.62 More explicit is the suggestion that the trolls are discouraging thoughtful discussions and repelling readers who dont have the stomach for the daily dose of vitriol.63 The forums are thus cast as formerly pleasant public spaces that have become overrun with anonymous miscreants, and that the spaces must somehow be made safe from the perceived threat of anonymous writers. Taken together, the themes outlined above add to a mythos that has been repeated across many decades in journalistic arguments against anonymous audience feedbackthat anonymity itself is inherently unethical, is anathema to professional journalism, and is an affront to civil society.64 Five of the six essayists suggested that allowing anonymous comments has harmed the professional reputations of their publications. Schultz extended the assessment to the profession and society at large: [A]llowing people to hide behind anonymity has not been good for our industry, our culture or our country. . . . Most news organizations allow anonymous comments on their Web sites. Many, if not most, journalists oppose the practice.65 Such rhetoric is in line with previous research that suggested journalists may have a blind spot toward the potential positive aspects of anonymity in audience feedback forums.66 That could be because anonymity is something the writers have intentionally eschewed as bylined columnists (as opposed to copy editors and news directors, who work in relative anonymity). In fact, the professional success of columnists depends on being clearly identified for their workthey are authors and not just writers (to evoke the distinctions made by Barthes and Foucault).67 Thus, opinion columnists may place a great value on being identified with their opinions, and may not be sensitive to the proanonymity sentiments of those who use the forums in question. That blind spot is exemplified by Kane: [S]ome seem to really think there is a real danger of reprisal if they state strong opinions in a public forum. (Of course, I do that all that time, and nobody really bothers me as I go about my business in Milwaukee.)68 The implication is that if a bylined, high-profile journalist is comfortable putting his or her name to his or her writing and then going about his or her daily life, so should anybody else who wants to participate in public discourse.

Readers Responses: The Rhetoric of Liberty

To assess the concordance on this issue, this study also analyzed 927 responses to those journalistic essays. The initial soak started with a superficial categorization of the comments. The vast majority (659 comments, or 71%) were opposed to banning anonymity in the forums, 157 comments (17%) supported banning anonymity, and 111 (12%) offered negotiated opinions. Those frequencies are offered here only to be illustrative of the corpus of texts and should not be generalized. The process of multiple rereadings of the texts produced a number of different themes, three of which are described below. 1. Power to the people. Across all three categories, an explicit and repeated theme was that the forums should be managed by those who participate in the forums, not the

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staff of news media. Many comments equated the proposed bans on anonymity as authoritarian overreaching by the mainstream mediaone respondent to the Buffalo News ban wrote, What you are doing will eliminate the vulgar and racist from the debate [but many] of us who are not vulgar and racist will choose to no longer participate either.69 From Salon.com came this comment: Thriving online sites should censor lightly, and we (writers and editors) need to learn how to build up an immunity to stupid comments.70 A minority of the comments supported a ban on anonymity, and many did so not so much on the basis of encouraging civility in general but rather to increase participation (e.g., I quit reading and commenting because of the type of comments you mention. I thought Id never comment again.71). Among proponents of anonymity, a clear theme was that anonymity allows people to speak truth to powerful institutions (including the news media). Many comments from all three categories suggested that the media should not be the gatekeepers, but rather should provide more tools to allow the participants to police the forums themselves. This thread of three consecutive comments to Boston.com (the Boston Globes website) illustrates the theme almost perfectly (despite misspellings and grammatical errors): Stan-Krute wrote, Ive always posted online under my own name. I think that anonymity leads to the stupid nastyness that infects so many newspaper comment threads. Theres a reason for the term anonymous coward. Pulling away that cloak of anonymity would be a civilizing force.72 willyandBuster wrote, But could you find that you were suddenly getting dozens of nasty emails in your home inbox, Stan-Krute? I wouldnt like that. I think we should be more self-policing. I think we should point out rudeness where ever we see it, even if its rudeness on our political side.73 gaudete wrote, Perhaps a boston.com e.g. could offer both, anonymous and signed comment sections, or on different articles. I prefer anonymity because some people occupy sensitive places in our community, who could not otherwise comment because of that position, but still have good stuff to say. I find the terms screech stupid nastiness hateful vitriol etc. are just another way of saying I disagree with your comment.74 The third comment evokes two other aspects of this themefirst, that many consider anonymity necessary for participants to express thoughtful minority opinions and, second, that the term incivility is perhaps used too casually to denigrate minority opinions. 2. Paranoid about privacy. The responses also produced an overall sense that many forum participants have a great deal of mistrust toward others. Comments within this theme often made note of concerns about adverse employment actions; for example, If I say openly that part of my industry are thieves and swindlers; and scofflaws, cutting corners with real safety issues, I could be fired. Many people work for immoral

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supervisors who would fire many for voicing their opinions.75 Along those same lines, some writers who opposed anonymity equated the act of signing their own names to an act of bravery; that is, they recognized the risks of using their real names but accept those risks as part of participating in public discourse. Many comments suggested that society at large is rife with dangerous individuals (most often expressed via negative stereotypes and myths about mental illness). Very few comments suggested that the writers actually had been subjected to harassment stemming from their posts; most comments were merely vague and speculative (Bad idea. There are too many crazy people in this world who can very easily find out your address from the internet or phone book just from your name.76). Several different writers expressed fears about cyberstalking, identity theft, harassment via email or telephone, even violent assaults. In that regard, this theme parallels the dehumanization theme from the journalists essays, but from a different ideological positionwhile the journalists seemed to focus on trolls, the participants in the forums seemed more concerned with lurkers, or those who read online comments but do not participate in the discussions.77 Within the comments, it was generally accepted that nothing, including curbing anonymous commentary, could prevent the forums (or society at large) from including participation from kooks or trolls. 3. Anonymity as freedom. A third theme was centered on liberating aspects of anonymity, for good or ill. A few comments supporting a ban on anonymity suggested that doing so would restrict posters to think more carefully or show some restraint in their writings, while those suggesting negotiated or oppositional opinions often suggested that the value of anonymous commenting was that it encouraged people to speak their minds freely and in many different ways. Many comments (including those supporting anonymity) shared the journalists preference for civil discourse, but they differed from the dominant journalistic position about how to define civility. Several commenters argued that even offensive comments are illuminating of the breadth of humanity, warts and all. Some comments noted that racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are realities of modern lifethat reading such opinions in forums is unpleasant, but also a clear reminder that such antisocial attitudes still exist. Some equated the often rancorous tone of online forums with the rancor of contemporary politics in general (one writer suggested political rhetoric itself was bloodsport: The difference between a lot of trolls and politicians is the paycheck. With money comes identity.78). A number of comment writers found anonymity to be self-liberating and cathartic. One wrote, I personally think I have been able to work out some anger, in a few years of ranting on-line. I am a bit more sensible (just a bit) usually, although off-topic a lot of times.79 Wrote another, Write in praise of something and itll probably be plain and possibly off-putting, and ho-hum, but write with contempt and the words are vicious and cruel and bombastic and gnarly and grotesque and pus-filled and puking and . . . I swear it just pours out of me like that. I could write like that all day, just for the words. The language of contempt has all the best words.80

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Another common theme was a general sense of concern that society at large has accepted the vilification of dissent. One commenter noted, More often than not, views are disparaged and critics are smeared for delivering points of view which they simply disagree with not because its offensive. . . . Our current culture doesnt respect academic freedoms or dissenting points of view. Using real names could be harmful under these conditions.81 Other comment posters noted concerns that the ban on anonymity would curb good-faith criticism of government, employers, labor unions, the media, and other powerful institutions, such as this entry: The device allows ideas which authors anticipate might be greeted with less than popular enthusiasm to be exposed to public scrutiny. . . . Its about ideas, not the messenger. There will be those who want to shut down ideas.82 Wrote another, I am much more worried about the power and influence of the media, and their ever growing desire to abuse it, then I am worried about anonymous commenters. [Bans on anonymity] may just be a power grab by the media to maintain what many of them consider to be their holy domain, the First Amendment right to Free Speech, and a bigger effort to control it.83 A number of posts suggested that professional journalists had exaggerated the negative aspects of anonymity to create a straw-man justification to ban something the journalists dont like personally. A clear example of that is this post: [O]nline comments are not some Hobbesian post-apocalyptic state of nature ruled over by gangs of ferile teenage boys armed with flamethrowers and baseball bats. some people say some pretty stupid things, but i assume that thats merely because theyre stupid. i wouldnt mind posting my own name. i just dont think that having everyone do it would make any real difference.84

Discussion
In preparing this research summary, the author did a follow-up of the one news outlet studied here that had banned anonymous comments. The June 2010 column in the Buffalo News announcing its pending ban on anonymity generated 641 comments; an editors column six months later extolled the success of the ban,85 but drew just 12 comments, one of which stated, Articles that would have had hundreds of comments now get none. . . . The site is now BORING. Most articles have no comments, and the few that do have one or two.86 The outcome of the ban in Buffalo may illustrate a basic point of disconnect between journalists and the publicwhen it comes to audience feedback, many journalists may prefer quality over quantity, but many of those who use such forums seem willing to tolerate substandard writing and vitriol if it encourages broader public participation. The third stage of this study was to analyze all of the texts as one whole to find points of concordance. The rhetoric in the texts focused on broad, perhaps superficial, issues of control, with the antianonymity side arguing for more media control over the forums in the name of social responsibility and the proanonymity side arguing for less media control in the name of press/speech libertarianism. The underlying subtext is not so much focused on whether and how media should manage the forums to curb

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egregious abuses of the forumslibel and profanity, for examplebut perhaps to a greater extent whether and how to define civility in a pluralistic society. The term civility is presented here in quotes because its subjectivity is at the heart of the concordance of the two sets of texts. A prominent dictionary suggests one meaning of civil is observant of the forms required by good breeding. CIVIL often suggests little more than the avoidance of overt rudeness <owed the questioner a civil reply>.87 However, civil more broadly means of or relating to citizens . . . of or relating to the state or to its citizenry.88 That the term civil means more than polite is an important point to consider. This anonymous forum debate takes place during a period of particular divisiveness in the decades-long culture wars in America. There is some contention over whether the culture war reflects an America that is truly polarized on ideological grounds or (perhaps more likely) that most Americans are moderate but the media messages are dominated by the polarized fringes of culture and politics.89 There is little argument that the rhetoric of the culture war is often vitriolic and rancorous, what some scholars have dubbed to be incivility.90 Some scholars find impoliteness to be inextricably tied to the popular identities of news show hosts, outspoken guests, and responsive studio audiences in U.S. television news in the early twenty-first century,91 and that blogs, talk radio, and cable news channels regularly use outrage discourse to provoke emotional responses from readers and viewers.92 In that light, the undesirable impoliteness and rudeness found in many online forums appears to accurately reflect the state of the culture, or at least the dominant voices in the culture. Indeed, the apparent dearth of calm and courteous discourse in politics, entertainment, and journalism itself may have elevated incivility in discourse to a cultural norm in an otherwise civil (law-abiding) society. As many of the analyzed comments argued, some critics may call an opinion uncivil simply because it challenges their beliefs or ideologies. Very few of the comments suggested that anonymity itself is somehow uncivil, contrary to the very clear connections made by the journalists in their essays. Much more research of the issue is needed to see whether there are any actual (rather than perceived) correlations between anonymity and incivility in public discourse. At this time, the oft-repeated suggestion that anonymity is directly responsible for incivility is an unsubstantiated and dubious claim of causation. This study was limited in that it cannot answer questions about quantities and frequencies. Textual analysis cannot predict or analyze the intentions of the writers (any more than quantitative content analysis can), so questions as to motives, uses and gratifications, agenda setting, and so on would require additional, new research projects. Furthermore, this study could only analyze the opinions expressed in the texts and cannot answer any questions about the dominant attitudes of other journalists who work within the six news organizations studied here, nor the attitudes of the unknown number of audience members who read the texts without sharing their own views, who could outnumber forum participants by a ratio of nine to one or more.93

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Some comments posted to online forums are certainly shocking and offensive. But media scholars often see, in even the most deplorable media messages, exemplification of the varied dimensions of social and cultural phenomena. Banning anonymity might, for example, curb the expression of crude misogyny or racism in the forums. Would the ban, however, curb the underlying misogynistic or racist hostility of those who are inclined to express such untoward beliefs? The libertarian argument may be that society can learn more about itself from unfettered forums, including learning more about many of the darkest, antisocial, even loathsome aspects of humanity. The socialresponsibility argument may be that suppressing such comments can, in time, diminish the underlying hostility. The debate in journalism circles over anonymous comments seems to break along those lines, and often falls into an eitheror dichotomy. Yet it may be more useful to view libertarianism and social responsibility not as dichotomous but rather as balancing influences on either side of a continuum. In that sense, the journalists essays are clearly focused on the most extreme cases of antisocial rhetoric in the forums, and in applying Condits concordance theory to both the essays and the responses, it is clear that both sides agree that monsters taint the discussions.94 The true point of contention in this debate seems to be over whether anonymous discourse is a cause of incivility or a symptom of incivility, and additional studies should focus less on what anonymity might cause and focus more on why commenters use it in the first place. Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes
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4. Connie Schultz, Web Site Posters Anonymity an Invitation to Mischief, Plain Dealer, March 28, 2010, http://www.cleveland.com/schultz/index.ssf/2010/03/web_site_posters_ anonymity_an.html (accessed July 1, 2010). 5. Rem Rieder, No Comment: Its Time for News Sites to Stop Allowing Anonymous Online Comments, American Journalism Review 32 (JuneJuly 2010), http://ajr.org/ Article.asp?id=4878 (accessed July 1, 2010). 6. Andrew Donohue, A New Day for Commenting at VOSD, Voice of San Diego, April 23, 2010, http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/clipboard/article_e2bb2c7a-df78-11de8f60-001cc4c03286.html (accessed July 1, 2010). 7. Margaret Sullivan, Seeking a Return to Civility in Online Comments, Buffalo News, June 20, 2010, http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/06/20/1088283/seeking-a-return-tocivility-in.html (accessed July 1, 2010). 8. Andrew Alexander, Reader Ideas for Moderating Comments, Washington Post, April 6, 2010, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/2010/04/readers_offer_ideas_ for_modera.html?wprss=ombudsman-blog (accessed July 1, 2010); Mark Glaser, Traditional Media Ready to Elevate the Conversation Onlinewith Moderation, MediaShift, January 16, 2008, http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/01/traditional-media-ready-to-elevate-the-conversation-online----with-moderation016.html (accessed July 1, 2010). 9. Linda Steiner and Clifford Christians, Key Concepts in Critical Cultural Studies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). 10. Norman Fairclough, Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (New York: Routledge, 2003). 11. Celeste Condit, Hegemony in a Mass-Mediated Society: Concordance about Reproductive Technologies, Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11 (September 1994): 20530. 12. Reader, Should A Citizen Have His Say? 13. James Aucoin, Does Newspaper Call-in Line Expand Public Conversation? Newspaper Research Journal 18 (summerfall 1997): 12240; Reader, Ethical Blind Spot. 14. Cornell University Law School, McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commn, http://www.law. cornell.edu/supct/html/93-986.ZO.html (accessed July 5, 2010). 15. Victoria Smith Ekstrand, Unmasking Jane and John Doe: Online Anonymity and the First Amendment, Communication Law & Policy 8 (fall 2003): 40527. 16. Reader, Should A Citizen Have His Say?; Reader, Ethical Blind Spot. 17. Sidney Forsythe, An Exploratory Study of Letters to the Editor and Their Contributors, Public Opinion Quarterly 14 (spring 1950): 14344; William D. Tarrant, Who Writes Letters to the Editor? Journalism Quarterly 34 (autumn 1957): 5012; Gary L. Vacin, A Study of Letter Writers, Journalism Quarterly 42 (summer 1965): 46465; Bill Reader, Guido Stempel III, and Douglass K. Daniel, Age, Wealth, Education Predict Letters to the Editor, Newspaper Research Journal 25 (fall 2004): 5566. 18. Jack Rosenberry, Virtual Community Support for Offline Communities through Online Newspaper Message Forums, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 87 (spring 2010): 15469. 19. Reader, Ethical Blind Spot. 20. Cornell University Law School, McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commn.

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21. Historians Clinton Rossiter and Ralph Ketcham made note of the inexactitude of identifying the authorship of some such essays in their introductions to several chapters in the edited volumes The Federalist Papers (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, ed. Clinton Rossiter [New York: Signet Classics, 2003]) and The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates (ed. Ralph Ketcham [New York: Signet Classics, 2003]). 22. Reader, Ethical Blind Spot. 23. David De Cremer and Mriel Bakker, Accountability and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: The Influence of Others Reputational Concerns, Current Psychology 22 (June 2003): 15563; Tatsuya Nogami, Reexamination of the Association between Anonymity and Self-Interested Unethical Behavior in Adults, Psychological Record 59 (spring 2009): 25972. 24. Bruno S. Frey and Stephan Meier, Pro-social Behavior in a Natural Setting, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 54 (May 2004): 6588. 25. Martin Tanis, Health-Related On-Line Forums: Whats the Big Attraction?, Journal of Health Communication 13 (October 2008): 698714. 26. Eliza Tanner, Chilean Conversations: Internet Forum Participants Debate Augusto Pinochets Detention, Journal of Communication 51 (summer 2001): 383403. 27. Eric J. Stieglitz, Anonymity on the Internet: How Does It Work, Who Needs It, and What Are Its Policy Implications? Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 24 (3, 2007): 13951417. 28. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public OpinionOur Social Skin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 29. Scott Wright and John Street, Democracy, Deliberation and Design: The Case of Online Discussion Forums, New Media & Society 9 (October 2007): 84969. 30. Muneo Kaigo and Isao Watanabe, Ethos in Chaos? Reaction to Video Files Depicting Socially Harmful Images in the Channel 2 Japanese Internet Forum, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (July 2007): 124868,1248. 31. Tanner, Chilean Conversations, 393. 32. Helen Kennedy, Beyond Anonymity, or Future Directions for Internet Identity Research, New Media & Society 8 (December 2006): 85976. 33. Shintaro Azechi, Information Humidity Model: Explanation of Dual Modes of Community for Social Intelligence Design, AI & Society 19 (January 2005): 11022; Hiroaki Morio and Christopher Buchholz, How Anonymous Are You Online? Examining Online Social Behaviors from a Cross-Cultural Perspective, AI & Society 23 (March 2009): 297307. 34. Jason M. Lavender and Drew A. Anderson, Effect of Perceived Anonymity in Assessments of Eating Disordered Behaviors and Attitudes, International Journal of Eating Disorders 42 (September 2009): 54651. 35. Heather Draper, Jonathan Ives, Hardev Pall, Stephen Smith, Sarah Damery, and Sue Wilson, Reporting End-of-Life Practice: Can We Trust Doctors to Be Honest?, Palliative Medicine 23 (October 2009): 67374. 36. Miglena Mantcheva Sternadori and Esther Thorson, Anonymous Sources Harm Credibility of All Stories, Newspaper Research Journal 30 (fall 2009): 5466.

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37. Stuart Hall, Encoding/Decoding, in Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 197279, ed. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1973; repr., London: Hutchinson, 1980), 12838. 38. Condit, Hegemony in a Mass-Mediated Society. 39. Condit, Hegemony in a Mass-Mediated Society, 210. 40. Condit, Hegemony in a Mass-Mediated Society, 210. 41. Condit, Hegemony in a Mass-Mediated Society, 215. 42. Kevin M. Caragee and Wim Roefs, The Neglect of Power in Recent Framing Research, Journal of Communication 54 (January 2006): 21433. 43. Marie Hardin and Stacie Shain, Strength in Numbers? The Experiences and Attitudes of Women in Sports Media Careers, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 82 (winter 2005): 80419; Elizabeth A. Burch and Joseph C. Harry, Counter-Hegemony and Environmental Justice in California Newspapers: Source Use patterns in Stories about Pesticides and Farm Workers, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81 (autumn 2004): 33977; Lisa A. Flores, Dreama G. Moon, and Thomas K. Nakayama, Dynamic Rhetorics of Race: Californias Racial Privacy Initiative and the Shifting Grounds of Racial Politics, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3 (September 2006): 181201; Kimberly N. Kline, A Decade of Research on Health Content in the Media: The Focus on Health Challenges and Sociocultural Context and Attendant Informational and Ideological Problems, Journal of Health Communication 11 (1, 2006): 4359; Jamie Landau, Straightening Out (the Politics of) Same-Sex Parenting: Representing Gay Families in U.S. Print News Stories and Photographs, Critical Studies in Media Communication 26 (March 2009): 80100; Carolyn Michelle, Human Clones Talk about Their Lives: Media Representations of Assisted Reproduction and Biogenetic Technologies, Media Culture & Society 29 (July 2007): 63963; Bill Reader, Turf Wars? Rhetorical Struggle over Prepared Letters to the Editor, Journalism 9 (October 2008): 60623; Don J. Waisanen, A Citizens Guide to Democracy Inaction: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colberts Comic Rhetorical Criticism, Southern Communication Journal 74 (AprilJune 2009): 11940; Nancy Worthington, Encoding and Decoding Rape News: How Progressive Reporting Inverts Textual Orientations, Womens Studies in Communication 31 (fall 2006): 34467. 44. The differences in how each mediums website managed comments, as well as the dynamic nature of online forums in general, posed a challenge for data collection. The best method for data collection ended up being to save, in one sitting, individual web pages of comments to PDF files that were sequentially numbered, so that the comments could be analyzed offline. 45. Rieder, No Comment. 46. Henry J. Gomez, Plain Dealer Sparks Ethical Debate by Unmasking Anonymous Cleveland.Com Poster, Plain Dealer, March 26, 2010, http://blog.cleveland.com/ metro/2010/03/plain_dealer_sparks_ethical_de.html (accessed March 5, 2011). 47. Stuart Hall, Introduction, in Paper Voices: The Popular Press and Social Change, 19351965, ed. Anthony Charles H. Smith (London: Chatto & Windus, 1975): 1-24.

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48. Sullivan, Seeking a Return to Civility. 49. Eugene Kane, Ban Anonymous Comments? The Conversation Begins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 29, 2010, http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/89420837.html (accessed August 4, 2010). 50. Jesse Singal, Freedom of Screech: Anonymous Online Comment Boards Can Be Obnoxious, but Eliminating Them Is a Mistake, Boston Globe, June 27, 2010, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/27/freedom_of_screech/ (accessed June 28, 2010). 51. Matt Zoller Seitz, Why I Like Vicious, Anonymous Online CommentsAs News Outlets Push Back against Trolls, We May Be Losing Something: A Glimpse of the Real America, Salon.com, August 3, 2010, http://www.salon.com/2010/08/03/in_defense_of_ anonymous_commenting (accessed August 4, 2010). 52. Pitts, Anonymity Brings Out the Worst Instincts. 53. Sullivan, Seeking a Return to Civility. 54. Seitz, Why I Like Vicious, Anonymous Online Comments. 55. Singal, Freedom of Screech. 56. The Knowledge Base of Indiana University Technology Services offers this definition of the Internet slang term troll: In email discussion lists, online forums, and Usenet newsgroups, a troll is not a grumpy monster that lives beneath a bridge accosting passers-by, but rather a provocative posting intended to produce a large volume of frivolous responses. The term can also refer to someone making such a posting (a troll) or to the action (trolling, to troll). From http://kb.iu.edu/data/afhc.html (accessed March 4, 2011). 57. Reader, Ethical Blind Spot. 58. Singal, Freedom of Screech. 59. Pitts, Anonymity Brings Out the Worst Instincts. 60. Sullivan, Seeking a Return to Civility. 61. Singal, Freedom of Screech. 62. Schultz, Web Site Posters Anonymity. 63. Schultz, Web Site Posters Anonymity. 64. Reader, Ethical Blind Spot, 6970. 65. Schultz, Web Site Posters Anonymity. 66. Reader, Ethical Blind Spot. 67. The distinction between author and writer is generally couched in terms of motives, the former wanting to control and benefit from the work, the latter generally expressing ideas without desire for recompense. For a deeper explanation of the distinctions, see Roland Barthes, Authors and Writers, in A Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag (New York: Hill & Wang, 1982) 185-193, and Michel Foucault, What Is an Author?, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984): 101-120. 68. Kane, Ban Anonymous Comments? 69. Anonymous untitled comment to Buffalonews.com, July 24, 2010, 9:18 a.m., http://www. buffalonews.com/2010/06/20/1088283/seeking-a-return-to-civility-in.html#comment (accessed July 1, 2010).

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70. Julwat, The Real Writing Voice, comment to Salon.com, August 3, 2010, 9:33 a.m., http:// www.salon.com/2010/08/03/in_defense_of_anonymous_commenting (accessed August 4, 2010). 71. Billbowers, untitled comment to Miamiherald.com, April 7, 2010, 8:25 a.m., http://www .miamiherald.com/2010/03/31/1555967/anonymity-brings-out-the-worst.html (accessed July 1, 2010). 72. Stan-Krute, untitled comment to Boston.com, June 27, 2010, 5:52 a.m., http://www.boston .com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/27/freedom_of_screech/?com ments=all#readerComm (accessed June 28, 2010). 73. WillyandBuster, untitled comment to Boston.com, June 27, 2010, 6:02 a.m., http://www .boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/27/freedom_of_screech /?comments=all#readerComm (accessed June 28, 2010). 74. Gaudete, untitled comment to Boston.com, June 27, 2010, 6:09 a.m., http://www.boston .com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/27/freedom_of_screech/?com ments=all#readerComm (accessed June 28, 2010). 75. Noumenon, untitled comment to Miamiherald.com, April 4, 2010, 11:40 a.m., http://www .miamiherald.com/2010/03/31/1555967/anonymity-brings-out-the-worst.html (accessed July 1, 2010). 76. My2cents, untitled comment to Jsonline.com, March 29, 2010, 2:27 p.m., http://www.jsonline. com/blogs/news/89420837.html?page=2#comments (accessed March 5, 2011). 77. Lurking is the practice of reading online discussion forums without participating, and lurkers are assumed to form the vast majority of those who read online forums, with some studies estimating lurkers to be from 80% to 98% of forum readers. For more on the topic, see Jenny Preece, Blair Nonnecke, and Dorine Andrews, The Top Five Reasons for Lurking, Computers in Human Behavior 20 (March 2004): 20123, and Artemio Ramirez Jr., Shuangyue Zhang, Cat McGrew, and Shu-Fang Lin, Relational Communication in Computer-Mediated Interaction Revisited, Communication Monographs 74 (December 2007): 492516. 78. Support Our Tropes, Public Speaking as a Bloodsport, comment to Salon.com, August 3, 2010, 9:34 a.m., http://letters.salon.com/2010/08/03/in_defense_of_anonymous_commenting/view/?show=all (accessed August 4, 2010). 79. Mhoney, On-line Agression [sic] Is Therapeutic, comment to Salon.com, August 3, 2010, 9:59 a.m., http://letters.salon.com/2010/08/03/in_defense_of_anonymous _commenting/view/?show=all (accessed August 4, 2010). 80. Omni32, Ah, but the Language of Contempt Is So Much Fun to Write, comment to Salon.com, August 3, 2010, 10:27 a.m., http://letters.salon.com/2010/08/03/in_defense_ of_anonymous_commenting/view/?show=all (accessed August 4, 2010). 81. Dreweagle09, untitled comment to Boston.com, June 27, 2010, 8:38 a.m., http://www. boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/27/freedom_of_screech/ ?comments=all#readerComm (accessed June 28, 2010). 82. E67, untitled comment to Boston.com, June 27, 2010, 3:57 a.m., http://www.boston.com/ bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/27/freedom_of_screech/?comments=al l#readerComm (accessed June 28, 2010).

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83. Jayman6018, untitled comment to Boston.com, June 27, 2010, 8:10 a.m., http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/27/freedom_of_screech/?co mments=all&plckCurrentPage=1 (accessed June 28, 2010). 84. Tallmchris1, untitled comment to Boston.com, June 27, 2010, 3:13 a.m., http://www. boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/27/freedom_of_screech/ ?comments=all&plckCurrentPage=1 (accessed June 28, 2010). 85. Margaret Sullivan, Changes Bring Success Online, with More to Come, Buffalonews. com, January 11, 2011, http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial-page/columns/margaretsullivan/article306128.ece (accessed March 8, 2011). 86. Peter Zummo, untitled comment to Buffalonews.com, Jan. 9, 2011, 11:09 p.m., http:// www.buffalonews.com/editorial-page/columns/margaret-sullivan/article306128.ece (accessed March 8, 2011). 87. Civil, in Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed. (Springfield, MA: MerriamWebster, 2001), 209. 88. Civil, in Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary. 89. See, for example, Morris P. Fiorina, Samuel J. Abrams, and Jeremy C. Pope, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (White Plains, NY: Longman, 2010). 90. Robert P. Daves and Frank Newport, Pollsters under Attack: 2004 Election Incivility and Its Consequences, Public Opinion Quarterly 69 (5, 2005): 67081; Susan Herbst, Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010). 91. Pilar Garcs-Conejos, Impoliteness and Identity in the American News Media: The Culture Wars, Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behavior, Culture 5 (2, 2005): 273303. 92. Sarah Sobierai and Jeffrey M. Berry, From Identity to Outrage: Political Discourse in Blogs, Talk Radio, and Cable News, Political Communication 28 (1, 2011): 1941. 93. Preece, Nonnecke, and Andrews, Top Five Reasons for Lurking; Ramirez et al., Relational Communication in Computer-Mediated Interaction Revisited. 94. Concerns about monsters in the news media is nothing new. For example, the concept was evoked in Catos Letter No. 32: Reflections upon Libelling, June 10, 1721, http:// classicliberal.tripod.com/cato/letter032.html (accessed March 8, 2011): And as to those who are for locking up the press, because it produces monsters, they ought to consider that so do the sun and the Nile; and that it is something better for the world to bear some particular inconveniencies arising from general blessings, than to be wholly deprived of fire and water.