Talking politics on the side: political conversation on Slashdot

Cliff Lampe
School of Information University of Michigan

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     Last modified: May 10, 2005

Abstract
Political conversation takes place in many venues. Online efforts to encourage political conversations tend to focus on creating specific places for discourse. However, political discourse may occur in parallel with other conversations, or in communities centered on topics other than politics. In this paper, I analyze political conversation in a technology news and discussion site called Slashdot. This website has hundreds of thousands of users and daily receives tens of thousands of comments on the stories posted. To manage this massive participation, Slashdot uses a rating system to provide feedback about the value of comments in story discussions. Although technology is the main focus of this site, Slashdot has often posted politically oriented stories, and recently started a section specifically devoted to politics. This paper examines how participation in political discussions on Slashdot differs from other types of discussions on the site, including how ratings differ for politically oriented comments. I find that politically oriented stories receive more comments, that more overall rating occurs in political stories, and that comments in political threads receive more divisive ratings than comments in other threads. Additionally, I describe the history of political discourse on the site, focusing on the events that precipitated the inclusion of a politics section on a technology oriented site. I finish by discussing design recommendations for inclusion of political discussion in political stories, and the use of ratings specifically for political discourse.