Focused Research Question

I am exploring the official and unofficial norms of the Daily Kos diarist community, who sets the norms, and how filtering works to create a sense of unity and netroots Democratic support even as it stifles dissent through group participation, hierarchical privilege and control. Does this count as censorship, and does this violate the community tenets of netroots, especially in a site that is built upon its grassroots approach to democracy? Or is that a normative part of this discourse that members have come to expect with the “ideological amplification” of online political sites?

Daily Kos is an “open community”—virtually anyone can sign up for an account to write a diary—and as a group blog it raises the question of whether it should allow the community to dictate what content or vision is in line with the “Kossack” majority, and the role that diarists should have in relation to the staff editors on the main page. What impact do diarists actually have on shaping community discussion as opposed to the powerful front-page posters?

Due to the accessibility of Daily Kos as an “open invite” blog, a hierarchy of control has been set up with moderators (paid editors) and dedicated members who work to discredit and bury spammers or trolls. Despite being a group blog (and purported bottom-up inclusiveness), there are, in fact, several layers of unofficial control and filtering. Thus, how do norms, modes of control, and filtering work to maintain unity of party and of message as an activist community working towards supporting and influencing the Democratic and particularly liberal ideology and electoral success?