We are what we say: Why and how news outlets and politicians must manage the talk and behavior they influence

By Peter Friedman and Jenna Woodul

In the wake of last week's shootings in Tucson, Arizona, debate rages about whether the vitriolic dialogue in politics and news is a cause of the tragedy. We don't know that a direct link exists from that discourse to this disturbed young man's actions. But we do know that words count. In fact, in our socially networked world, words count more than ever before. Sometimes for good and sometimes for bad, conversations on social networks drive relationships - and then, in turn, behavior.

A 2008 study by Harvard Medical School and University of California San Diego researchers has actually proven the dynamic exists. As noted in a review of the study by the Washington Post, "many behaviors are swayed by social networks in ways that have not been fully understood.... It may be possible ... to harness the power of these networks for many purposes such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise, or even fighting crime."

The study specifically cited the influence of social network interchange on helping people to stop smoking, or even contributing to others' obesity. Not part of this study, but another clear example, is the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, which influenced an unprecedented number of people to vote and to donate money.

Does political rhetoric influence people's opinions, feelings and behavior? Of course it does. That's why the news outlets and politicians do it - to drive buzz, ratings, loyalty, fundraising, and votes. It's why they increasingly are focused on talk, talk, talk. And why they have websites and Facebook Pages. Inspiring talk is intended to inspire. Inflammatory talk is intended to inflame. Political rhetoric spawns discussions, influences opinions, and drives behavior.

Given the convergence of social media, news, and politics, we have a never-before opportunity for massive inclusion and participation in the dialogue of our society. With that, we also have a never-before challenge to be civil and constructive instead of destructive. Social media and online social culture reflect our society and culture overall. This fundamental dynamic has become all the more obvious since the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, with the ensuing dialogue and rhetoric.

While the shooting has been the leading topic across all media, it's been dwarfed by the conversations online. Facebook alone reported that in the first 24 hours after the deadly incident, it counted at least three million posts on the subject. The discussion volume on Facebook, just one social network, likely had more comments than all traditional media channels (TV, radio, print) put together.

We need to fully understand that the power of social networks to amplify rhetoric and affect behavior is here and cannot be stopped. People on social networks talk about what news outlets and politicians say, even if the source doesn't have a website. Certainly a site with words and graphics to motivate people, further supported by Twitter and Facebook comments, is likely to stimulate even more dialogue.

The difference between effecting constructive results versus destructive ones comes down to how conversational venues are managed. First, the players must acknowledge their impact on the dialogue. Then they must proactively manage the venues where these discussions takes place.

Managing the point of convergence

Various news outlets and other sites have been known to shut down their comment boards, because they were overwhelmed by the chaos and negative content. Managing a conversational environment can be daunting, and we sympathize with these organizations. But web conversations can't be shut down, any more than an ostrich with its head in the sand stops a thunderstorm.

Also this week, some radio/TV talking heads have insisted they're not responsible for what others do with their words. Yet news outlets and politicians push and benefit from the dialogue.

With great power comes great responsibility. Failing to proactively manage venues for dialogue is abdicating that responsibility. In simpler words, either put up (a social network conversation and manage it) or shut up (completely - don't open your mouth on any media outlet).

At the core of this week's discussion is the question (maybe even the accusation) that the vitriolic rhetoric in Congress, on radio and TV, and on websites has gone too far, has even contributed to the murders. Politicians and traditional media all talk about not speaking so harshly on TV and radio. But such communications channels are easy to control, if their owners choose to control them.

What about social media? Can it be controlled? Should it be? In our 27 years of experience managing social media - in some cases for giant social networks, major news outlets, and even a political campaign - we've seen again and again that news and political sites tend to jump to extreme binary choices: Either don't touch any user content for fear of appearing to censor, or just don't have user content (shut it down) for fear of what the content will be. Neither of these is the best approach, from a social media, business, or societal perspective.

By following the seven best practices we outline below, news and political sites can engage and embrace user content, effectively managing it to allow for a participatory society, often with meaningful dialogue. Along the way they can gain audience share (a business goal for both news outlets and politicians) and tell their story (the creative and business goal for news outlets and politicians) - all while containing destructive behavior.

First, we must separate the concept of managing people's behavior toward one another from that of controlling people's content. In the offline world at a political or news forum, most news companies or politicians would not allow people to throw bricks at each other, shout so much that nobody else can be heard, or allow a town hall to be shut down due to harassment. (Well actually, we've seen that happen a few times in the last few years.)

But for the most part, people who don't follow civil rules of the road in the offline world are escorted out of the meetings - not because of their opinions, but rather because of the disruptive way they behave. Similarly, in our offline world, expressions of hate are generally frowned upon. As a matter of culture in a democracy, free expression is allowed as long as it doesn't cause actual damage. Freedom of speech is sacred, but not to the point of falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Letters to the newspaper editor and phone calls to radio stations are sought after, but destructive content rarely gets printed or aired. Rules of the road and culture are among our offline discourse best practices that can be successfully applied online as well.

Here are our seven best practices for how this user content can be managed and moderated on news and political websites:

1. Build a cultural model that supports the brand values.

For news outlets, the brand is the news brand, or a specific media show. For politics, the brand is usually the candidate or political party - sometimes the specific issue position. Establishing the cultural model is the single most important best practice, yet the one most often skipped. It should be well thought out, and done first, before launching a Facebook Page or community site.

As shown in the Harvard-UCSD study, people's dialogue and behavior in social networks has a cascading, replicating effect - for good (stop smoking) or bad (become obese). Just like a party, it can be formal or edgy, wild or calm, positive and constructive, or hateful and destructive. The words, designs, and examples on websites and social networks, the way the brand (i.e., talk-show hosts or candidates) behaves - all such factors are taken as cues and behavior models for the virtual party.

Failure to understand and act on this relationship likely explains the gap between intention and result on the websites of politicians and talk TV shows. If you don't want people to take violent cues from you and then talk up the idea of shooting people, avoid images and talk that suggests such things. If you want people to listen to each other, then model that behavior yourself.

More than anything, your human participants model and establish the culture. People understand better how we act in a given venue if the host/facilitator treats people in a certain way, which is then picked up by other participants, eventually making behavior inconsistent with the culture obvious and unacceptable.

Done well, a candidate or news outlet's community reflects back its own values, goals, and rhetoric. The key is to recognize this dynamic and define the cultural model and cues upfront.

2. Set the rules of the road: Establish, publish, and moderate to enforce guidelines.

In a social network venue, the rules of the road are moderation guidelines - the acceptable language, behavior, and conversational fodder for this site. Is this a family-oriented site with no profanity, child-appropriate topics, and casual supportive behavior? Or is it an adult-oriented site, with edgy subjects, and profanity allowed? Are hate comments and harassment allowed or not?

With rules clearly established and communicated, people expect that the host (even if a news outlet) removes content and individuals who don't follow the rules, just as the same news outlet would remove people from the audience in a theater if those people were disrupting the debate on the stage.

Professional moderators manage such vigilance best, but even a small operation, using in-house part-time people, can do it.

3. Have human eyes review the content.

Building a culture, managing rules of the road, and handling that cascading behavior dynamic requires human beings looking over what's happening on a site. Yes, software tools can help with speed, volume, quality and insight. But these tools should be used to support people making judgments - not to replace the human factor. Human judgment is especially critical for the controversial topics and rapidly changing discussions dealt with by news outlets and politicians.

4. Engage proactively to set story, tone, and context.

Don't just react to what happens. Execute your cultural plan and empower your human moderators to participate - programming the venue by giving people something to do, something to react to, contribute to, build on. And then when conversations get going, stir them to keep them active by presenting other views, inviting others to contribute, encouraging dialogue, placing a premium on respectful discourse.

Feature the type of content and conversation that fits the culture and behavior you want to stimulate. If you're looking for civil and provocative discourse that's intelligent and compelling, then that's the type of discussion to feature. Recognize participation that suits the cultural model, discourage what doesn't, and stay firm on the policy of deletion and banning of behavior that flagrantly ignores the standards.

Our own review of several campaign sites and Facebook Pages during the Nov 2010 election revealed that many were no more than one-way broadcast venues - political rhetoric and position statements posted for consumption. Many did not even allow user comments. Such sites represent a missed opportunity to engage and lead - as well as an abdication of responsibility to acknowledge, initiate, and participate in actual conversations among voters.

Social engagement is not just posting brand or news or political content for people's response. It's creating and managing a conversation - a party among your audience, constituents, or customers. And it's a party based on dialogue and relationships among those constituents, not just from the brand to their customers.

5. Be prepared to scale your response, not your anxiety.

What happens when the volume and intensity explode, and you and your team are overwhelmed by an onslaught of activity?

First, if you have followed best practices 1,2,3 and 4 above, you're not alone. You have an established culture, rules of the road, and a core community that is with you and will help you.

Just as in our offline debate forum, the majority of the audience is with you and will support you when you remove disruptors. Your community regulars will help you identify problem content and participants, provide morale support, and reward you with more loyalty for having them on your team.

Even so, when mass volume hits, you need to be ready to manage it. And it can be brutal. We've had experiences with tens of thousands of posts a day or more, with 60% of them needing removal. Ideally, you have a trained team to moderate (in-house or vendor) that is ready to scale up. Best practice is to have a social crisis management plan - ready ahead of time - that anticipates sudden volume surges and how to respond to them. The plan may be to add people, or perhaps to adapt the rules of the road.

As an example, when one of our clients ran a Super Bowl commercial a few years ago, their posting volume surged. Unfortunately, some of that volume was racist and disruptive to the community. In addition to scaling the moderation activity, we changed the site mode to pre-screen content before publishing it on the site. We also posted a message to the community that we were making this change temporarily to support the members. This approach slowed down the stream of hateful content, thus supporting the established culture and earning more loyalty from the client's customers.

Most important is not to give up, not to shut down the site. While it may temporarily cost more to manage all those comments and discussions, it's worth it. First, it is part of community publisher's responsibility to keep the dialogue going on. But even from the perspective of overall goals, the sudden volume, if well managed, will increase the size and loyalty of your core audience - translating to audience and ratings for a news outlet and fundraising and votes for politicians.

6. Use conversational applications for real conversations.

Strong conversational applications let people go deep on distinct subjects. A message forum, for example, lets your audience members or constituents talk to each other - not just to broadcast their random comments. A topical structure makes it easier to moderate inappropriate contribution, minimizing interruption and distractions. Overall organization is hierarchical and parallel; it threads the comments within one conversation together for easy navigation, and the conversation remains, so that individuals can find and join it again. The best applications allow for featuring users and content as a means of focusing the discussions and supporting the cultural model. And strong moderation tools are a must.

Comment applications such as the Facebook Wall, Twitter, and other non-threaded conversational venues are useful and effective for self-expression. But they're primarily broadcast-oriented, and don't lend themselves to managed and participatory dialogue. In fact, the original name for such applications on AOL was "Shouts" or shoutouts. If you're looking for real discussion, not just short headlines, comment applications alone are not the best choice.

7. Coordinate with law enforcement officials and social support bureaus (such as suicide lines).

Responsibility in a social network includes follow-through with the offline world. The larger the service, the more intense the subjects, the more likely such connections are required. For all the large social network venues we've managed (AppleLink, Talk City, eWorld, AOL, eBay), we've established and maintained connections with law enforcement and social support lines. If we see a hint of violence, death threats, or illegal activity, we report it to the authorities. If we see troubled persons who might hurt themselves, we have the contact info for support groups to assist them. Many times we've seen an online community come together and help someone stay alive or work with law enforcement to track down criminals.

Conclusion: Amplified talk requires amplified responsibility and management

The issues we face today - whether vitriolic rhetoric, violence in our streets, or the capacity to influence the opinions and behavior of others - aren't new. The potential value or threat of such influential power to a civil and democratic society isn't new. All this stretches back to Greek democracy, Roman forums, and through our own 235-year history.

What has changed is the velocity of conversation and the speed with which behavior is influenced; it has been amplified by modern media - most especially social networking. And such velocity holds true, whether for the good or the bad. Rather than try to control it or avoid it, we simply need to amplify our responsibility for and management of it.

About the authors
The authors, Peter Friedman and Jenna Woodul are the founders and executive officers of LiveWorld, a leading provider of social network solutions to Fortune 500 corporations. They have over 25 years of experience creating, managing, and moderating social networks, including for major news outlets (MSNBC, ABC), political campaigns (Hillary Clinton For President), and brands (Apple, AOL, eBay, American Express, P&G, Unilever). LiveWorld has delivered over 1.5 million hours of moderation, managing online communities for hundreds of clients in dozens of countries and directly touching hundreds of millions of online users.

About Jenna Woodul
A LiveWorld founder, Jenna is LiveWorld's Executive Vice President & Chief Community Officer. LiveWorld's strategic community model evolved from her 20 years of first-hand design and management of online social venues. She oversees LiveWorld's community programming and moderations services and is executive sponsor for several LiveWorld clients.