This article is by Glenn Fuller and Jason Wilson, both of whom are assistant professors of communications and journalism at the University of Canberra. It was first published on The Conversation and is re-published here with permission.

analysis The presence of “trolls” in online forums is often portrayed as a blight on constructive debate, but a recent stoush indicates political discussion by antagonistic online users may not be all bad.

You may have read about the recent war of words between Opposition communications spokesperson Malcolm Turnbull, the national business daily, the Australian Financial Review (AFR), and Minister for Communications Senator Stephen Conroy. The topic of discussion: the quality of reporting and commentary about the National Broadband Network (NBN) infrastructure project.

Yesterday the AFR reported Turnbull as having said technology journalists were fanning a pro-NBN zealotry among tech-savvy citizens who wanted the ultimate broadband regardless of more feasible alternatives. It follows up comments made by Senator Conroy at a recent press conference about NBN Co’s new corporate plan. Conroy expressed a preference for a thread on the Australian broadband user website Whirlpool over the AFR when it came to NBN coverage:

“For those interested in a comprehensive discussion of the issues I can recommend to you the Whirlpool website and particularly the thread titled ‘Fighting the FUD’. It is a very informative thread and I would encourage you to have a look at it. It does address a few of the issues that we debate regularly.”

Analyse this
Prompted by Senator Conroy’s comments and as part of an ongoing interest in the nature of online political discussion – with a specific focus on practices commonly regarded as “trolling” – we have surveyed recent stories in the AFR on the issue.

Our analysis of 51 published articles mentioning Senator Conroy over approximately the past six weeks indicates the AFR is certainly not a fan of the high-speed internet infrastructure project, nor of the Senator. In all stories on Conroy, there were only four positive headlines and 18 neutral ones – 29 (more than 53%) – were negative. (A Google spreadsheet with all the data is available here.)

A number of headlines personally attacked the minister: Conroy does a Comical Ali compared him with the delusional Iraqi information minister; and Conroy slow off-piste contained an ironic allusion to his skiing holidays with media moguls. The NBN itself was described in the AFR’s headlines as: “hopelessly behind targets”, “a big picture idea that still looks a bit fuzzy”, and a “broadband mess”. Most discussions were premised on the idea that the project was a failure in the making.

The few positive stories did not praise Conroy, but instead offered guarded and isolated accounts of pleased users, or events which may or may not drive subscriptions to the network. So Conroy has no reason to be pleased by the AFR’s coverage.

A mixed bag
Certainly, discussion of the NBN on Whirlpool is not as unremittingly hostile as in the AFR, although it certainly features vocal critics of the infrastructure project. The difference is that it takes the form of an ongoing, multifaceted debate in which supporters of the project are on-hand, and able to engage with detractors on the details of the plan.

The Whirlpool thread mentioned by Senator Conroy features users discussing, and frequently disputing, the details and relative merits of the NBN. To date this thread has extended over ten separate parts. (A common practice on forums is to break off a thread when it reaches a large number of pages, and begin a “new” thread as an extension of the old one.)

A shorter version that indicates the character of discussion about the NBN on Whirlpool is this thread discussing IT news outlet Delimiter’s article about Conroy preferring Whirlpool over the AFR. Here, as in the longer threads, users cycle around familiar disagreements on the political, technological and financial aspects of the NBN.

Often, as is the case in so many online forums, this debate is ill-tempered or repetitive. Occasionally users are mean-spirited or deliberately disruptive. Long-standing participants do not shift their positions – these users are not interested in a deliberative compromise, or in altering their political commitments or allegiances. The forums are not an ideal deliberative-democratic space in which rational consensus emerges. Indeed, there is often enough behaviour which might be regarded as trolling – where users are deliberately and gratuitously confrontational, make ad hominem arguments, or attempt to derail or obfuscate debate.

What Senator Conroy may have realised, though, is that, as in other online forums, this kind of conflict is not simply negative in its effects. Indeed, we can think about its forms of conflict and antagonism as generative and productive. The rolling confrontation between opponents and proponents of the NBN produces more nuanced and detailed arguments than are often found in mainstream reporting, even if this detail does not emerge in the coherent and linear format of newspaper reporting and analysis.

Conroy is right to recognise that the Whirlpool threads on the NBN are one of the richer repositories of publicly available information on the project. But this is precisely because they are a site of relentless conflict about the value of the investment.

Dissing the point
Mainstream media often dismisses online forums, blogs and social media as constituting any sort of viable alternative to traditionally constituted, “quality” print and broadcast media. One of the reasons often given is the intemperate nature of online discussion, which is connected by critics with their easy accessibility, their lack of gatekeepers, and the anonymity or pseudonymity that they afford to users.

There is, at the moment, what can only be characterised as a global moral panic about “internet trolls”, a phrase that in the hands of the mainstream media can encompass a wide range of conflictual or antagonistic behaviours online. But clearly, relationships of antagonism pervade contemporary democracies – indeed democracy is seen by some theorists as either a means of resolving inevitable conflict, or as only authentic where it is “agonistic”.

In the case of Conroy and the AFR, we can see an antagonistic relationship which might not only be necessary, but a good sign journalists are carrying out an appropriately forensic and adversarial form of policy scrutiny. The question to be asked of the AFR reportage is whether the ultimate goal of the reporting on the NBN and Conroy personally is policy analysis or simply adversarial. In whose interests is it for the AFR’s readers to be presented with a continually adversarial engagement with the NBN project?

At a micro level, the Whirlpool threads offer one example of the way in which online debate, open to all-comers, can produce high quality, accessible policy information and debate.

The authors do not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. They also have no relevant affiliations. This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article. Image credit: Hanspeter Klasser, royalty free

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1. @Matt_Phipps
   Posted 22/08/2012 at 1:11 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Did you just tell the AFR to stop trolling?

   • BuildFTTP
     Posted 23/08/2012 at 7:48 am | Permalink | Reply

     ‘This article is by Glenn Fuller and Jason Wilson, both of whom are assistant professors of communications and journalism at the University of Canberra. It was first published on The Conversation and is re-published here with permission.’

     It wasn’t written by Renai :)

2. Dean
   Posted 22/08/2012 at 1:43 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I generally find threads like that “Fighting the FUD” one to be somewhat difficult to approach. Where do you start reading? Right at the beginning where you’ve got hundreds of pages before you can catch up, and where the posts are so old and likely out of date anyway? Or somewhere near the end so you can see just where the debate is up to now?

   Starting near the end makes sense because the argument tends to go round and round in circles anyway. But then you might miss some of the context and I usually find myself going backwards anyway to find out what people are referring to.

   What would be awesome is if someone posted a one-page summary every now and then. Any takers?

   I like the discussions here better, because the articles give you a nice jumping point to begin the conversation, and it usually takes a day or before the conversation starts going in circles (by which time, there’s a nice fresh one on the front page). Renai’s well-written and thoughtful articles help, too :)

   • SeanC
     Posted 22/08/2012 at 3:49 pm | Permalink | Reply

     I used to visit the NBN forum on Whirlpool everyday. It was an excellent tool to learn about the opposing policies, the outright fallacies and the varying technologies being proposed.

     These days I only look at it weekly. As the article says, the forum arguments are broadly circular so there is little to be gained from constant lurking but it’s useful to help keep abreast of recent developments and to help me formulate my own opinion… which is where our traditional news organisations are failing us.

     I have no issue with journalists offering up their opinions in clearly defined ‘this is our opinion’ sections, however it seems that many publications are unable to provide raw information in any artical without including superlatives. I’d love to see a ban on the use of the word “slams” in headlines for example. It’s an emotive and combative term that predisposes the reader before they’ve even started gathering the ‘facts’ presented in the article.

     Anyway, back on topic, my opinion of the Whirlpool forums is generally positive… but is that because most of the posts agree with my opinion?

     • Hubert Cumberdale
       Posted 22/08/2012 at 3:57 pm | Permalink | Reply

       “Anyway, back on topic, my opinion of the Whirlpool forums is generally positive… but is that because most of the posts agree with my opinion?”

       Not necessarily. My opinion of the Whirlpool forums is generally negative. I really dont have many nice things to say about the place even though most of the posts agree with my opinion.

       • GongGav
         Posted 22/08/2012 at 4:05 pm | Permalink | Reply

         I avoid it as much as I can. Both sides are too quick to misinterpret what someone says, and it can get hostile quickly. Lots of de-FUDing on the forums, but in and around that its a catfight a lot of the time.

       • Tom
         Posted 22/08/2012 at 10:22 pm | Permalink | Reply

         Maybe for the NBN forum there that has so many trolls. I find the other forums to be useful, especially the hardware forums.

       • PeterA
         Posted 23/08/2012 at 9:53 am | Permalink | Reply

         Agree regarding the NBN forum. I rarely go there these days.

         But the other forums are a wealth of information. I regularly find fantastic information on every conceivable technology topic. If I google for a problem, if a whirlpool post comes up that is my first stop – it has the answer 99% of the time.

   • BuildFTTP
     Posted 23/08/2012 at 7:40 am | Permalink | Reply

     “I generally find threads like that “Fighting the FUD” one to be somewhat difficult to approach. Where do you start reading? Right at the beginning where you’ve got hundreds of pages before you can catch up, and where the posts are so old and likely out of date anyway? Or somewhere near the end so you can see just where the debate is up to now?”

     It can be discouraging to even bother trying when you see ‘part #’ in the title

     “What would be awesome is if someone posted a one-page summary every now and then. Any takers?”

     I might give it a shot, but I think there are many others that would be more suited to this than I.

3. aka Sam
   Posted 22/08/2012 at 2:44 pm | Permalink | Reply

   You must be mistaken: lurkers are a myth.

   • Ben Zemm
     Posted 22/08/2012 at 9:24 pm | Permalink | Reply

     If a lurker then posts to discredit you they become a poster, discrediting themselves! Black is white, don’t get killed on a zebra crossing!

4. Craig
   Posted 23/08/2012 at 2:39 pm | Permalink | Reply

   The problem with a lot of the traditional media is they like to dress up opinion pieces as reporting. Murdoch press is usually easy to spot the bias, but the so called quality media outlets (Fairfax, Ch9/7/ABC news programs) it’s often very hard to spot this.

   The beauty of the forums is you not only get a wide range of views, but you can often tell (especially when they rant) the bias of people and unlike the traditional media it’s quite easy for someone to call them on this bias.

   The other good thing with forums is that you can check a person’s previous postings to gage how well they held up. Where as the traditional media & their experts are rarely held to account for previous reporting. This is not only technology, but also finance (Alan Kohler & his mates make very interesting reading 18-36mths ago)

   lastly the traditional media have always had a very weak grasp on technology. Many of their so called experts are often influenced by their connections to companies in the industry (remember Gareth Powell spruiking Microsoft in the 90′s?), The gadget Guy spruiking .

5. Stephen
   Posted 23/08/2012 at 7:31 pm | Permalink | Reply

   So what you’re saying is that a bunch of people all expressing their own views is better than a newspaper expressing Gina Reinhart’s view? The AFR, like most of the established Australian media (yes, including the Murdoch rags), doesn’t want or care about “feedback”, “commentary” or “informed opinion” unless it’s telling the story its owners want to tell.

6. bananabender
   Posted 01/10/2012 at 3:31 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Most of the people on posting on Whirlpol are low -level IT drones. They have no expertise in deploying complex infrastructure. The genuine network infrastructure experts (not on the gravy train) typically think the NBN is utter crap.

   • NBNAccuracy
     Posted 01/10/2012 at 4:32 pm | Permalink | Reply

     “The genuine network infrastructure experts (not on the gravy train) typically think the NBN is utter crap.”

     Really? Who are these mythical people? I say mythical because people keep mentioning them but have never named any. Where as the network infrastructure experts in favour of the NBN all seem to be nameable.

     Come on, give us a list. You imply that it’s most of the industry. It shouldn’t take long to give an impressive list of high level experts.

   • NBNAccuracy
     Posted 01/10/2012 at 4:38 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Actually I probably guess, Opticom and a mikey mouse Aussie satilite company.

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