Corporate commenters
September 9, 2008 9:57 AM | Written by Darius Razgaitis
My colleague Yan's recent post on blog commenters got me to thinking about Lithuanian politics, corruption, and corporate blogging.
Allow me to explain...
Comments, to me, are like mini letters to the editor. They empower readers and can often be more beneficial than the content on which they reflect. They drive blogging, provide it with power, and foster online conversation. They're democracy in action!
That was my impression, at least until I worked on a political campaign in Lithuania. Tracking news about my candidates on the popular Delfi news portal, stories often received thousands of comments. I quickly learned that those comments usually come from hired goons who lambaste their targets within seconds of a story's posting.
This was frustrating (to say the least) for high-powered politicians who tracked stories about themselves. What would you do if your competition was out there destroying your image via an unbiased news source? Would you lock yourself in your office for the rest of the day trying vainly to respond to every vile word (like a politician I knew did)?
This is not a healthy or effective solution. There are several "-bilities" to consider when responding (or not) to trolls and cases of flaming online:
- Credibility - There are websites out there that allow voting/rating on comments to varying degrees, among them, NYT, YouTube, and Digg. Until this is a widespread means of filtering out irrelevant comments, remember that comments can come from anywhere.
- Ignorability - Is bad publicity is better than no publicity? Evaluate whether responding to an incendiary attack will really quell any disputes. Sometimes ignoring can be the best policy.
- Meet up (ability) - Other times, ignoring an issue will make it worse. Consider engaging legitimate commenters, as Andrew Revkin, author of NYT blog Dot Earth recently did.
- Googleability - Fight fire with content by increasing the amount of Googleable news about yourself. From a PR perspective, this is what you should be doing anyway.
Surely, there are many more avenues to consider.
What do you do when your CEO wants to pull a Rahodeb?
Comments (3)
September 10, 2008 4:03 AM, Posted by Aras Vebra
There is one commenter on Delfi who calls himself Tikras Lietuvis (A True Lithuanian). We’ve determined without a doubt that he waits for articles about foreigners, e.g. about expatriates getting dual citizenship, and immediately writes scathing comments about any notions other than Lithuanian purity and supremacism, and then waits for responses and writes back to them with equal speed and vitriol. I don't think it's just a politicians hired goons that do it; for some deranged people it's just a hobby.
November 7, 2008 3:58 PM, Posted by darius
sounds deplorable!
November 7, 2008 4:00 PM, Posted by darius
extremely deplorable!