CommentIQ: Enhancing Journalistic Curation of Online News Comments.

National news outlets routinely publish articles that attract hundreds and even thousands of user comments. These comments often provide valuable feedback and critique, personal perspectives, new information and expertise, and opportunities for discussion (not to mention profanity and vitriol). The varying quality of comments demands a high level of moderation and curatorial attention in order to cultivate a successful online community around news. Amongst publishers there is a growing awareness that finding and publicly highlighting high quality comments can in turn promote the general quality of the discourse. Further journalistic value can be gleaned by identifying and developing new sources of information and expertise from comments. In this talk I will present an editorially-aware visual analytics system called CommentIQ that supports moderators in curating high quality news comments at scale. The possibilities and ramifications of algorithmically infused social media moderation will be discussed in terms of journalistic ideals and norms of free speech and inclusion.