Presentation

I am most interested in studying how the Daily Kos diarist community is working to preserve its grassroots activism and influence over the Democratic party through informal community norms and majority control, and whether it can sustain this consensus without a powerful opposition. I found it somewhat surprising that, for a group blog, there appear to be several layers of unofficial control and filtering going on, both by other users and by a handful of editors—and ultimately Marcos Moulitsas if he decides to step in and ban a diarist, since he privately owns the site. Daily Kos’ overarching goal seems to be to provide a gathering place for partisans of similar disposition, to gain politically advantageous information, analysis, and debate.

Perhaps even more so than any administrative rules, informal community norms serve an important function in shaping the site. Regular users (self-proclaimed “Kossacks”) typically leave negative and disparaging comments on diaries with radical, offensive, or off-message viewpoints, as well as diaries that seem deliberately provocative in order to stir up controversy. Trusted users can easily “hide” controversial or off-topic messages, which raises the question of whether this is really allowing for free speech. However, the sometimes fine line between what ranks as acceptable and unacceptable can vary widely between individual members of divergent political stripes, and this can spur rating wars/ division among diarists. Although Daily Kos’ community norms claim support for all Democratic candidates, there is a palpable hostility toward those Democrats who are seen as “accommodationists,” disloyal politicians (read: Joe Lieberman), and establishment politicians who voted for the Iraq War—like Hillary Clinton, for example. Before the 2008 Election, the majority of diaries are aimed at attacking the Republican Party (George W. Bush provided a substantial mobilizing target that swelled Daily Kos’ ranks during the past decade), but Democrats are increasingly fair game for withering criticism now.

Points of view that diverge from the site’s vision are invariably rejected outright or buried.
Opinions that are seemingly legitimate in broader Democratic circles but depart from the majority or the more-powerful editors may also be stifled. After Obama’s election, Daily Kos saw a proliferation of not only trolls (suspected Republican sympathizers posing as Kos diarists), but so-called purity trolls from the far-left who are lamenting Obama’s perceived shift to the center. Consequently, Daily Kos appears to be attempting to build a platform for social action, necessitating a measure of consensus. Its system of aggregation thus promotes diaries that cohere with Zuniga and his hierarchically privileged members’ philosophy, and to a lesser extent perhaps, the will of the Kossack majority. However, this system could also backfire should members in the vein of Hillary’s proponents challenging the dominant position of the site feel marginalized. This could ultimately fracture the Daily Kos community and undermine its ability to mobilize and rally behind a united movement.

Daily Kos has a clear inclination toward openness (it is relatively painless to become a member and comment on other’s blogs, or start one’s own diary for that matter), but it also makes the community vulnerable to outsiders who do not share the vision of the site: either because they have different opinions or have ulterior motives, requiring these modes of control and layers of filtering. The informal rules of its community structure relationships between majority and minority and internal control. The damage infiltrators can do by disrupting accepted discourse outweighs the benefits of differing opinions and debate. The site does allow for disagreement, but it has a bias towards viewpoints that reinforce rather than challenge its ideology.