Case Studies

According to official and unofficial community norms, recommended diaries are supposed to reflect the majority view of the community. But what happens when a minority of vociferous diarists (or a single individual) infiltrates the community and presents controversial messages that disrupt the ideology of the site’s founder, Zuniga, and his senior staff?

Specifically, I want to look at how the site has dealt with several unique groups of “infiltrators” through enforcing community norms, filtering, and hierarchy. Looking at 9/11 Conspiracists whose posts proliferated after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and gained a high volume of traffic and comments (leading to administrative sanction and a change in policy); Hillary Clinton supporters who unleashed attacks during the 2008 Presidential Primaries on the site’s majority “juvenile Obamabots” they claimed were discriminating against them and ultimately fragmented the Kos community (community norms/pressure); and most recently trolls like a recent diarist advancing the theory that Obama is really a Muslim (participation).

The majority uses a number of levels of control to prevent against the damage of dissent.
Daily Kos emphasizes “collective action,” but the damage minorities can do by disrupting the accepted discourse far outweighs the benefits of differing opinions and debate. The norms and hierarchy at Daily Kos arose and continue to be shaped by these power struggles among members with divergent perspectives.

Daily Kos Community Structure

Some have termed political sites like Daily Kos “mullet blogs” because they consist of a select group of editors who serve as administrators and can post on the main page at will, and below them the “back-end” diarists who have to claw their way to the top by garnering positive ratings for their comments and getting their diaries promoted to either the recommended list or featured on the main page.

Back-end diarists receive far-less attention than the front-page editors, though fellow members can recommend posts they think should get bumped up to the main “Diaries” page, or potentially the main page. Daily Kos has a relatively low barrier to entry. Anyone with a valid e-mail address can register to sign up for free membership and write a “diary.” A handful of paid editors act as administrators who can post entries or elevate other users’ diaries to the front page. The remainder of diarists must garner positive ratings through recommended diary entries. To deter trolling and drive-by-shooting, Daily Kos requires new members to wait one day before commenting, and one week before writing a diary entry.

Markos “Kos” Moulitsas Zuniga, Daily Kos’s founder, has a direct role in molding the community, retaining final say over site policy and every so often banning members who abuse the site’s rules or are brought to his attention by concerned diarists. Zuniga, under his “Kos” pseudonym, and his selected editors regularly post on the main page and elevate other diaries they deem worthy of greater exposure. There are about a dozen contributing editors, three to four of whom are selected from the ranks of Daily Kos diarists each year to join the staff.

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?

Research Proposal

I am interested in studying the DailyKos online community, particularly the “diarist” section of the Web site that allows any user to register for an account and post on the blog –usually opinions or responses to other posts – with little to no filtering. As an open invite group blog, DailyKos relies on the “marketplace of ideas” theory that its users will weed out slanderous and unsubstantiated claims and provide informative content of their own. I think the immense popularity of the DailyKos online community, its reputation as a far-left echo chamber and its entanglement in several high-profile ethical flaps make it ripe for further research and ethnographic observation.

The potential ethical minefield that is DailyKos raises a number of questions that warrant further study:

• Who is vetting diarists and regular posters whose stories sometimes blow up and ricochet through the mainstream media – only to be exposed as fallacious (i.e. the explosive Palin’s “Baby-gate” scandal). Should there be a more stringent vetting process or would top-down control defeat the whole purpose of the group blog structure?

• Are DailyKos diarists simply Democratic party mouthpieces bent on sliming conservative politicians or contributing to an information network through advocacy journalism?

• Should DailyKos posters continue to have the option of anonymity—or should they be forced to reveal their identity? And should these bloggers be considered journalists? For example, Kos took heat over accusations that several of his “reporters” had received compensation from the Howard Dean campaign. Kos claimed they weren’t journalists.

• Are there any ethical guidelines or is it just willy-nilly marketplace of ideas filtering out refuse through the rating system and posters editing one another?

• Should the mainstream media cite DailyKos blogs, and how should they attribute such quotes (Fox news cites entire blog, not diarist)?

• What if a candidate uses the blog as a platform for self-promotion through blog posts through self or other bloggers, or uses blog as a DailyKos endorsement?

• Contributors are not paid, but Kos takes chunk of ad revenue. Is this fair for a community blog, or should there be some form of revenue sharing?