Technology: The Civic Labor of Online Moderators

[Mia]

The Civic Labor of Online Moderators
IPP 2016: The Platform Society
c
©
J. Nathan Matias 2016

Abstract
Volunteer moderators of online platforms have done fundamental work to foster social relations for over forty years. Moderators create, support, and control public discourse for millions of people, even as their uncompensated labor upholds platform funding models. In this paper, I examine the “civic labor” of moderators on the social news platform reddit, where a strike by over two thousand subreddit communities in July 2015 forced the company to meet their demands. Scholarship on volunteer moderation has tended to view this work as digital labor, civic participation, or oligarchy. In mixed-methods research with over 52,000 subreddits and over a dozen interviews, I show how the everyday
meanings of moderation work are negotiated as moderators face the platform, their communities, and other moderators alike. In disputes over moderator decisions, in the process of choosing moderators, and in the governance of wider networks of many subreddits, moderators must manage their position with all three stakeholders. I also show how the recognition of this civic labor brings clarity to complex moments of collective action like the reddit blackout. Volunteer governance continues to be a common approach to managing social relations, conflict, and civil liberties online. Our ability to recognize the nature of moderation work will shape our capacity to address those challenges as a society.

A history of online Moderation. PDF format.

http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/ipp-confe...ine_Moderators__Internet_Politics_Policy_.pdf

 

[Mia]

From the paper above:

Moderation as Civic Participation
The work of moderation online is the work of creating,
maintaining, and defining “networked publics,” imagined
collective spaces that “allow people to gather for social,
cultural, and civic purposes” (2). While social platforms offer
technical infrastructures that constitute these publics, the
work of creating and maintaining these imagined spaces is
carried out in many everyday ways by platform participants
and moderators.
Butler and colleagues call the work of moderation “com-
munity maintenance,” drawing attention to the “communal
challenge of developing and maintaining their existence.”
They compare these communities to neighborhood societies,
churches, and social movements. Writing about the details
of community work online, Butler and colleagues draw
attention to the benefits of affiliation and social capital.
Where Terranova and Postigo see labor in service of platform
business models, Butler and his colleagues describe commu-
nity maintenance as a service to the community itself (4).
Consequently, their survey research imagines moderation
similarly to any community work. Aside from the unique
challenges of tending community software, people support
their communities by recruiting newcomers, managing social
dynamics, and participating in the community

As online harassment has grown in prominence, schol-
arship on the role of moderators has drawn attention to
their work during conflicts to protect people’s capacities to
participate in publics. Volunteers who respond to harassment
create and manage technical infrastructures such as “block
bots” and moderation bots to filter “harassment, incivility,
hate speech, trolling, and other related phenomena,” argues
Stuart Geiger. These volunteer efforts see moderation as
“a civil rights issue of governance,” where marginalized
groups deploy community infrastructure to claim spaces for
conversation, community, and support.


Along with this a huge thanks to our Moderators and Administrators for what they do, everyday.

 

[Mr Allen]

Yeah, I've crossed swords with the Mods on many a forum including on here, but on the other hand I've posted on un-moderated "anything goes" forums and would much rather post on a board which has the Mods to kind of "reign in the insanity" if you like.