Moderating Censorship? The Role of the Moderator: Problems and Possibilities

Scott Wright
University of East Anglia

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     Last modified: May 6, 2005

Abstract
This paper will analyse the role(s) that moderators play in government-run online discussion forums. Moderators are widely thought to be crucial to the facilitation of high quality democratic debate because they try to control the content and flow of discussions. However, there are also persistent fears that moderators act as censors of free speech rather than as facilitators of debate. Two models of moderation will be developed that appeal to different policy goals: content moderation and interactive moderation. The practical problems and possibilities of these models will be analysed through case studies of the Downing Street website (large-scale, content moderation) and the E-democracy Forum on Citizen Space (small-scale, interactive moderation).

The analysis shows that there were numerous problems, particularly with content-moderated forums. Accusations of political censorship on the Downing Street website were rampant, making headline news in the national press. The analysis draws a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate censorship, and shows that it was the opaque rules, and particularly the “housekeeping function” of the moderator that created most of these problems (53.9% of messages were deleted n=74,958) rather than overt censorship. Interactive moderation was found to be a positive force, though the benefits must be carefully weighed against the financial costs. The findings from the two case studies will then lead into several recommendations, most notably that the censorial role of the moderator should separated from facilitation activities – the former being undertaken by independent groups and the latter by civil servants, thus protecting the authority from damaging accusations while allowing facilitation activities not to be tainted by the censorial ones.