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“The Great Orange Satan”

and Collective Norms:

An ethnographic study of
the Daily Kos diarist community

Evan Hall

Daily Kos:
http://dailykos.com/
Digital Hub:
http://evanhallj676.blogspot.com/
1. Delicious bookmarks page
2. Blog posts and virtual tour
3. Selected audio and video sidebar
Introduction

In the midst of his Internet-fueled 2004 presidential primary campaign, Democrat Howard Dean made

the prescient assertion that, "This party's strength does not come from consultants down. It comes from the

grassroots up." Though his bid for the nomination collapsed shortly thereafter, Dean’s meteoric rise nevertheless

heralded a breakthrough in online politics and the growing power of the netroots that would later propel him to

the Democratic National Committee Chair in 2005. The netroots fused grassroots activism with web-based

democratic communities committed to organizing party machinery for electoral victory. Furthermore, the

support of this new online populist movement encouraged candidates to diverge from the Democratic Party line,

promoting a progressive ideology and a shift toward the left in the national debate.1

Perhaps more than any other site at the time, the collaborative blog Daily Kos set the mark as an early

trailblazer in web-style democracy, and continues to be upheld as an example of how a political community can

assemble online as a united coalition. The site championed Dean and continued to carry on his opposition to the

Iraq war when he dropped out of the race. Moreover, Daily Kos established itself as a prominent gathering place

for disenchanted Democrats during the Bush era to debate policy positions, raise money for promising

politicians or recruit volunteers, and develop strategies for defeating Republican candidates.2

Markos “Kos” Moulitsas Zuniga started Daily Kos in 2002 as an experimental online collective with

political aims. In the years since, his blog became enormously popular and spawned numerous imitators, liberal

or otherwise. Moulitsas explains in the site’s “About” page that he conceived Daily Kos during “those dark days

when an oppressive and war-crazed administration suppressed all dissent as unpatriotic and treasonous.” A

veteran of the U.S. Army, Moulitsas “was offended that the freedoms he pledged his life for were so carelessly

being tossed aside by the reckless and destructive Republican administration.”3 This desire for openness and

informed opposition led to Daily Kos’ architecture, which allows anyone with a valid e-mail address to register

and post “diaries”—daily blog entries—as well as comment on other users’ posts and responses.

As it emerged from its infancy, Daily Kos became increasingly involved in a watchdog role: drawing

attention to and holding accountable commentators and reporters displaying conservative bias, as well as

breaking stories overlooked by the mainstream media. For example, when the Washington Post, in order to
remain “objective,” continually reported the Republican Party’s claim that infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff

made donations to Democrats in addition to the GOP, Kos members collected data and organized a response

that proved Abramoff had worked primarily for Republicans.4 The site remains influential among Democrats;

politicians like Barack Obama and former President Jimmy Carter have posted diary entries on the site, and its

members hold an annual convention that attracts party elite. Kos was also an early mobilizing force behind

Obama’s 2008 campaign; some alleged overenthusiastic in its sniping at Hillary Clinton during the primaries.5

Whether Daily Kos’ clout in the liberal blogosphere and the solidarity it built around electing President

Obama will continue to hold with an opposition weakened and disoriented by heavy losses in the 2008 Election

remains to be seen. Already, however, there are signs that the dwindling momentum may be starting to splinter

the community. Site traffic, which spiked to several million daily visitors in the months leading up to the 2008

Presidential Election, has slackened considerably following President Obama’s inauguration in January.

Currently, visits to the site hover around 800,000 per day. More popular mainstream blogs like The Huffington

Post have surpassed Daily Kos, but the site still boasts more than 100,000 registered users (about 1,000 of whom

are active participants), and over 4 to 6 million weekly page views.6

Given these threats to the political efficacy and legitimacy of the Daily Kos community, it’s illuminating

to observe how the site is working to preserve its grassroots activism and influence over the Democratic Party

through informal community norms and majority control—and whether it can sustain this consensus without a

clearly defined enemy. Although Daily Kos frames itself as a bottom-up, netroots community, the site possesses

an embedded hierarchy that privileges certain users over others. In addition, the site’s technological structure is

based on a very democratic, social control as an open-invite group blog, but there are several layers of formal and

informal filtering, both by users and a handful of contributing editors, with Moulitsas having the final say.

Daily Kos’ overarching goal seems to be to provide a forum for partisans of similar disposition to gain

politically advantageous information, analysis, and debate. Thus, I was interested in studying how norms, modes

of control, and filtering work to maintain unity of party and message in this activist community. My

ethnographic research was primarily conducted through observation and textual analysis of members’ diary

entries, comments, and general trends and events that have shed light on Daily Kos’ standards and mechanisms
of control. Specifically, I looked at how the site has dealt with several recent instances of disruptive discourse

through enforcing community norms, control, and hierarchical privilege both through technological and

normative means in order to achieve its democratic collectivism.

Site Architecture

Daily Kos served as an early test of online democracies with a very open architecture and an empowering

technological structure. The vast size of the community has largely determined how technical and social

dynamics shape the site. The core philosophy behind Kos’ movement building is to achieve the broadest

coalition of liberal and progressive voices practical, and thereby a community with real-world authority. The

corresponding technological effort is to ensure that important voices in this cacophony are heard. Thus, the site

relies on its members to sort through the flood of information by recommending diaries they feel are insightful

or deserving of wider attention. In this way, the site nurtures a sort of “collective intelligence.” Diaries that

receive the most recommendations are listed on a sidebar on the front page beside the featured posts from Kos

and his staff contributors. Members can also comment on diaries, as well as correct, repudiate, qualify or add to

posts. These forums often serve as a platform for deliberation over the community’s stance on specific issues,

how “liberal” the community should be and what priorities it should adopt. As we shall see later in this paper,

they are also the locus of clashes between disparate groups.

In order to differentiate itself from other group blogs, Daily Kos attempts to foster community-based

efforts through an “open source” model of activism, reporting and advocacy among individual members. 7 The

ability to self-publish diaries for others to read and comment on was added when the site was a few years old,

allowing users to organize around their chosen topics. As the number of these diaries ballooned, a system of

filtering developed to distinguish between stories the community values and those that are disruptive or

inflammatory. According to community vote, the “best” diaries are filtered into the “Recommended” section.

Contributing staff conduct another mode of filtering by choosing overlooked diaries to “rescue” every night and

compile a list of “rescued diaries” that receive much more attention than they otherwise would have.

The sea of diaries and comments poses a significant problem for Daily Kos, for an outsized community

can paradoxically be socially isolating if it cannot coalesce or it drowns out independent voices. Consequently,
site technology has grown with the expanding population of Daily Kos to maintain order and the site’s norms.

With comments frequently numbering in the hundreds (and sometimes topping 1,000), Daily Kos’ commenting

system allows users to filter conversations with the “title only” viewing option and the ability to collapse or

expand entire threads. This innately social choice lets users choose what comments to peruse or respond to

directly. For the most part, community members do the moderating in these forums, by expressing themselves

in a comment or leaving a rating to either support or hide someone else’s. Users can either vote to

“recommend” or give a “troll” rating to diaries and comments, which supplies a rather rough assessment of

accountability. This system also shapes community norms, with members deciding whose comments are spiteful

or incendiary and deserve to be hidden, and which users reflect the defining spirit of the site and subsequently

can be trusted to determine what “spiteful” or “incendiary” actually means in the Kos community.

Longtime “Kossacks” eventually become "trusted" users after building up cache on the site from

positively reviewed comments and diaries. This coveted status enables a user to vote to hide (or “troll-rate”) a

comment. Under community norms, trusted members are responsible for weeding out disruptive posts such as

erroneous arguments, spamming and intentionally personal attacks that bog down constructive discourse. Users

whose posts attract a high volume of hide ratings in a short time period are automatically banned from the site.

However, a number of ratings wars have erupted over troll-rating disputes, which led to a change to the existing

commenting technology. Site policy now asks diarists to back up their posts with a reputable source and to

refrain from wild speculation or topics intended to inflame.8 Among the questionable aspects of this moderation

are how one deduces the motivations behind a post and whether (purposefully or not) a trusted member has

misinterpreted an argument. And is the blatant misreading of unpopular viewpoints as vindictive in keeping with

the site’s emphasis on inclusion and the shared objectives of diverse liberal groups?

The peril of suppressing valid differences in opinion is that it reinforces the claim that Daily Kos is

perpetuating an echo chamber through not only community norms and filtering, but also through algorithms that

automatically regulate when a user should be banned or upgraded to “trusted” status. However, the accessibility

of Daily Kos somewhat justifies its hierarchy of control with paid staff and dedicated members who work to

discredit and bury spammers or trolls. Posts are rarely deleted, ostensibly under the “marketplace of ideas”
theory that users will sift out the detritus and presumably counter with a stronger argument or evidence that

gradually reveals the truth. The layout of the site also follows its inherent hierarchy. The front page features

diaries posted by Moulitsas and his staff. Daily Kos has about a dozen contributing editors, three to four of

whom are selected from the ranks of Daily Kos diarists each year to join the staff. With several hundred diaries

posted every day, regular users gain far less attention unless editors promote them to the main page.

To deter trolling and drive-bys, Daily Kos requires new members to wait one day before commenting

and one week before writing a diary entry. Furthermore, whereas Moulitsas and his contributors can post diary

entries at will, other members can only write one diary per day—another means of limiting the damage of an ill-

meaning infiltrator. Daily Kos is, by design, inclined toward openness. It is relatively painless to become a

member and comment on other members’ posts. However, this open structure also makes the community

vulnerable to outsiders who do not share the vision of the site—either because they have different opinions or

ulterior motives—which requires these modes of control and levels of filtering. The informal norms of Daily

Kos’ community structure relationships between majority and minority, as well as maintain internal control. The

damage infiltrators can do by disrupting accepted discourse outweighs the benefits of completely unfiltered

opinions and debate. As I will attempt to show with the following case studies, Daily Kos allows for

disagreement, but it has a bias towards viewpoints that reinforce rather than challenge its ideology, and seeks to

preserve political efficacy more so than inclusivity.

The Clinton Civil War

More than any of Daily Kos’ administrative rules, community norms serve an important function in

shaping the site’s community. Regular users typically leave negative and disparaging comments on diaries with

radical, offensive, or off-message viewpoints, as well as diaries that seem deliberately provocative. However, the

sometimes fine line between what ranks as acceptable and unacceptable can vary widely between individual

members of divergent political stripes, and this can engender division among diarists.

Although Daily Kos’ community norms claim support for all Democratic candidates, there is a palpable

hostility toward those Democrats who are seen as “accommodationists,” disloyal (i.e. Joe Lieberman), and

establishment politicians who voted for the Iraq War. This seeming contradiction—victory at all costs yet a
marked preference for certain politicians—became a serious point of contention during the hard-fought 2008

Democratic primaries. After the majority of Kossacks, including Moulitsas, rallied behind Barack Obama, Hillary

Clinton defectors threatened to leave the community to protest their marginalization. A quick glance through

the archives of Daily Kos during the spring and summer of 2008 shows that Clinton was intensely unpopular

among most members, and commenters lashed out against diaries supportive of her run.

“Definition of Hillary Clinton = Ignorant B****” blazed one especially inciteful diary that prompted the

banning of its author, gregoryjames, from the site. The following is a excerpt from the user’s post:

Without going into any great detail, Hillary owns the word ignorant, first and foremost, not in the sense of being unintelligent, but in
the way of ignoring the welfare of others. In the pejoratiive [sic] sense, Hillary is ignorant. To merit the term "bitch" one has to act in a
certain abrasive, aggressive, vindictive manner over time. I think she's earned it.9

Most of the over 100 commenters, while evidently not Hillary fans, accused gregoryjames of attempting

to fan the flames of hostility among her supporters. “Not cool,” wrote metal prophet. “While the Clinton camp

has certainly embarrassed themselves, there's no need to compound the problem by using sexist language.”10

Echoing many of the posters, liquidstoke called for the diary to be deleted and wondered,

MODERATORS, WHERE ARE YOU NOW???? “When people post inflammatory stuff like this, it deligitemizes [sic] this
blog community. And it hurts our chances to convincing undecided voters or Hillary supporters from chosing [sic] Obama.
Sir, you do Obama and our community more harm by posting this.....unless of course you are a troll from the Hillary or Repub
11
camp here to do us harm. I [sic] any case...MODERATORS PLEASE DELETE THIS DIARY ASAP

Daily Kos’ site policy doesn’t allow for deleting diaries (though users themselves can do so at will). As

BarbinMD, a member of the contributing staff, explained to liquidstoke, “We don’t delete diaries except for

copyright violation, outing someone or advocating criminal activity. The user has been banned.”12 Subsequent

comments to the post posed some intriguing questions about who should have control over banning a user, and

a number urged moderators to delete the post for its hate speech. It also served to spark a meta-discussion on

the site’s control structure, with some complaining that Daily Kos’ policy does not allow moderators to delete

diaries—only comments. A select few others railed against what they deemed a violation of free speech.

With tongue firmly planted in cheek, jbjowe wrote, “She’s a peach, a flawless gracious politician, whom brings

dignity and class into this election season. What a great person overall. Disclaimer: I can't give my real opinion

cause I'll get banned too so I provided my pseudo opinion.”13


Likewise, Jotorious wondered, “Why is everybody so mad? We have no problem using incendiary

language towards Bill O' Reilly.. Or Better Yet... (M)Ann Coulter. We all agree that Ann Coulter is a bitch. But

we can't call Hilary [sic] one? I don't get it.”14 Taking a different tack, jbjowe questioned whether the banning of

gregoryjames didn’t breach his First Amendment rights: “What bothers me is that the concept of free speech

seems to be applied selectively. Maybe this diarist crossed the line, but to ban him w/out a warning? I have seen

worst [sic] here on the kos since I have been here, were all those diarist banned too? I have seen the 'N' word

diaried 100s of times were those diarist [sic] banned?”

Clearly, gregoryjames’ diary invokes a measure prejudice and “fighting words,” more than warranting his

sanction. This does, of course, raise the question of selective filtering, but Kos never guaranteed his site was a

value-neutral space. As the site’s FAQ bluntly states:

Doesn't the First Amendment give me the right to talk about whatever I want here?
No. Daily Kos is owned by kos. The servers are his. He pays the bandwidth charges. He makes the rules; we are here as his
guests. If he decides tomorrow that anyone not posting in iambic pentameter will be banned, your options are either to brush
up on your poetry skills or find/start another forum.15

It does seem somewhat contrary to the philosophy Daily Kos purports in empowering bloggers. Moulitsas, after

all, authored the book Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, which is concerned

primarily with bypassing the elite gatekeepers in society.16 Ironically, Daily Kos sets up “gatekeepers” of sorts

with its power structure and by selecting members to promote or bar from the site.

Whereas gregoryjames’ diary was dismissed more on the grounds of its crude, bigoted language and the

fear of backlash over charges of sexism, Clinton supporters’ diaries received short shrift for flouting the majority

community norms that had implicitly endorsed Obama. As the spat ratcheted up, Clintonistas began referring to

intolerant Kossacks as “juvenile Obamabots,” and site became “The Great Orange Satan.”17 Many Clinton

supporters complained vociferously that they were the victims of discrimination and unsubstantiated attacks,

arguing that the site was meant to support all Democrats rather than a narrow faction.

Alegre, a well-known Hillary supporter on the site, posted an open letter to the Daily Kos community on

March 14, 2008, calling on her fellow minority members to boycott the site.

I will put my energy into posting at sites where my efforts aren’t routinely trashed, spammed and ridiculed by a handful of
angry, petty and spiteful folks who clearly have too much time on their hands….the majority of the administrators have
allowed this hostile environment to develop in our online community for anyone who isn’t planted firmly in the Obama camp.
They've routinely ignored personal attacks and allowed disruptive, spam-like posts to go unchecked whenever anyone
expresses support for Hillary or challenges something their candidate has said or done.18

Daily Kos, at least in this case, may have proved to be a community of exit for the Hillary supporters when they

sensed that they were no longer benefiting from the bristly discourse (though it’s important to point out that the

majority population remained largely intact.) Pro-Hillary diarists who did go “on strike” migrated to other sites,

many jumping ship to the MyDD blog started by Jerome Armstrong, who worked with Moulitsas as a political

consultant on the Howard Dean campaign and co-authored Crashing the Gate.

Though the party unity his site was meant to foster was endangered, Moulitsas was decidedly cool to the

Clintonistas’ plight; he wrote on the main page that her supporters could always find a place they were

appreciated somewhere else on the Web. Addressing the controversy in a post titled “The Clinton civil war,”

Moulitsas argued that Clinton’s increasingly desperate “kitchen sink offensive” had become indefensible.

“It is Clinton, with no reasonable chance of victory, who is fomenting civil war in order to overturn the will of the Democratic
electorate. As such, as far as I'm concerned, she doesn't deserve "fairness" on this site. All sexist attacks will be dealt with --
those will never be acceptable. But otherwise, Clinton has set an inevitably divisive course and must be dealt with appropriately.
To reiterate, she cannot win without overturning the will of the national Democratic electorate and fomenting civil war, and she
doesn't care.”19

Daily Kos’ anti-Hillary consensus and Moulitsas’ explicit vilification of Clinton ensured that, once again,

the collective view would trump individuals. Such behavior might be viewed as dismissive of minority voices, an

inconsistency with the site’s dedication to “openness.” In reality, points of view that diverge from the site’s

vision are invariably rejected outright or buried. Some would argue this same silencing of the minority is actually

further fragmenting the party, drawing lines between “true-blue” liberals and their moderate counterparts. But as

Farrell and Schwartzberg suggest in “Norms, Minorities, and Collective Choice Online,” that may not actually

pose a real normative problem: “The mechanisms of choice are structured so as to systematically exclude certain

points of view (those that are hostile to the political interests of the Democratic Party) and to aggregate opinions

around a clear and delimited program of action.”20 Thus, opinions that are seemingly legitimate in broader

Democratic circles but depart from the majority—or the site’s more powerful editors—may also be stifled.

In its attempt to build a platform for social action, Daily Kos necessitates a measure of consensus. The

site’s system of aggregation promotes diaries that cohere with Moulitsas and his hierarchically privileged

members’ philosophy, and to a lesser extent the will of the Kossack majority. However, this system could also
backfire by alienating members like Hillary’s proponents who challenge the dominant position of the site,

fracturing the Daily Kos community and undermining its ability to mobilize and rally behind a united movement.

“Babygate”

On the afternoon of Sat. Aug 30, 2008, diarist ArcXIX posted an exposé on John McCain’s vice

presidential running-mate Sarah Palin alleging she had faked her most recent pregnancy to cover up for the fact

that her 16-year-old daughter Bristol who was pregnant. The story broke over the weekend and the post

removed by Tuesday, but not before the explosive allegations had ricocheted through the media and prompted

an official response from the Sarah Palin camp denying the claims. The diary entry—a long, multimedia-heavy

post—attracted over 1500 comments before the accusations were discredited and ArcXIX pulled the diary. It

culminated in the assertion that Gov. Palin had lied to hide Bristol’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy. “Well, Sarah,

I'm calling you a liar,” ArcXIX wrote. “And not even a good one. Trig Paxson Van Palin is not your son. He

is your grandson. The sooner you come forward with this revelation to the public, the better.”21

The diary quoted selectively from news sources that noted how svelte Palin was even at seven-months

pregnant—so much so that her staff didn’t realize she was with child. The clincher, ArcXIX said, was Trig

Palin’s Down Syndrome diagnosis, since “80% of the cases of Down's Syndrome are in mother's [sic] under the

age of 35.” In addition to a hasty vetting process for Palin, ArcXIX cited the fact that Bristol was absent from

school with mononucleosis from five to eight months and exhibited a suspiciously “dome-shaped” abdomen.

The “Babygate” post provoked an avalanche of replies, with commenters engaging in a back-and-forth

debate over the legitimacy of its claims; the plurality of commenters refuted them as paper-thin but a sizable

group called for further investigation. A number of commenters suggested the post qualified as slander. Yamara

questioned Daily Kos’ standards and made an interesting comparison to Wikipedia. “Not enough evidence to

make this claim,” Yamara writes. “Unrec'd. Slander on a living person is strongly deprecated on Wikipedia, and

the same should go for DailyKos. Let the tabloids haul this manure.”22

This is where the “marketplace of ideas” proposition behind a group blog like Daily Kos can either break

down or efficiently clean comment threads and prove through counterargument that a diary is built on baseless
rumor—a fabrication just as malicious as the accusation in question. Daily Kos also runs the risk of undermining

its own reputation and legitimacy should it be seen as degenerating into sensationalism and Rovian smear tactics.

Dem in the heart of Texas attempted to debunk the controversial diary and steer conversation away from

this cliff through participation: “#1, you can't see Sarah's belly in virtually all those pictures. #2, I have college

students whose UNPREGNANT bellies look virtually identical to Bristol's. This is a HUGE DISTRACTION

from things that really matter, like a 72 y.o. nominee picking a completely inadequate veep.”23

Diarist WIds accused ArcXIX of another ethical transgression: photograph manipulation. Recognizing

that in this “Photoshop” era, pictures are no longer proof of anything, WIds appealed to members’ logic with a

point-by-point refutation of the claims.

Photos *do* lie if they are selected, manipulated, and arranged in such a way as to advocate a propaganda point. Not one of
the photos in this diary shows that Palin was not pregnant at the time they were taken. In every one that could possibly show
that, there is something disguising Palin's stomach: a long coat, or the corner of a desk. Sarah Palin was in the public eye for
the entire period of her pregnancy, constantly being interviewed and appearing at functions. If she was obviously not
pregnant in her 9th month, it would have been noted by reporters and photographers covering her. Give this up: there's
nothing here except a skilful propaganda job entirely lacking in ethics or compunctions.24

Though leftboy666 was wary of dismissing the story outright, he also cautioned against blowing it out of

proportion.

I don't think it's appropriate to TR [troll rate] or condemn those who have raised the questions. But I would urge lots of
caution and suggest we all should approach this with a healthy dose of skepticism. Let's all calm down, step back, and not
flogg [sic] this. Somebody out there will do the investigative work necessary and if there's any truth to it, that will come out.
But just like with the 911-conspiracy nutjobs, we on the left should keep our distance, however tempting it might be to think
to ourselves, ‘well of course the right-wing scum are capable of something like this.25

Tit-for-tat reasoning was common among supporters of the diary like Paolo, who also insisted that the

flattening effect of online participation has rendered libel benign, especially for an overexposed public figure.

On the grand scale of things, one 16 y.o. girl who has to undergo the scandal of single motherhood doesn't seem like such a
big deal. If the rumor is not true she (and her mother) could clear it up by tomorrow noon. If the daughter had any sense she'd
make a big YouTube joke video of the whole thing. Seen any MSM photos of the Fallujah aftermath? I thought not. Heard
any rumors that Obama is Muslim? I thought so. Rethugs: Live by the sword, die by the sword.26

Other users contended that the frenzy in the Daily Kos community over the diary was symptomatic of a

more disturbing degradation in content quality with the swelling ranks of users, lowering the discourse to what

some labeled National Enquirer-worthy. Though ArcXIX was later banned from the site, the diary was not

deleted by Moulitsas or his staff. The rule that members cannot hide a diary may seem potentially harmful to the

site, but it also assuages some of those who would accuse Kos of censorship if moderators selectively abolished
diary entries altogether. After the “Babygate” scandal went viral, Mouslitsas told Washington Post columnist

Howard Kurtz in an interview that he was hesitant to remove stories himself. "I feel a little weird about the

questions being asked,” he said. “But I also feel a little weird about saying, 'Shut up, people.' It takes a lot for me

to step in and squash what's on Daily Kos."27

Daily Kos’ norms and site policy may need further defining to protect against unreasonable slander;

Moulitsas did, after all, take the extraordinary step of purging all diarists who wrote 9/11 conspiracy diaries and

prohibiting any posts that deal with extreme conspiracy theories.28 The “Babygate” case also begs the question

of whether the site’s official rules regarding defamatory diaries are too weak. As some posters suggested,

Moulitsas could step in to remove diary entries bent on unfounded character assassination.

It’s revealing to compare how the community norms selectively transform according to the specific

situation. Many users who reflexively defend Obama against charges that he is a closeted “Muslim”29 (and would

surely denounce a smear of one of Michelle’s daughters), seemed far more open to deliberating the Palin

allegation–even when it concerned the potential slandering of a minor and evidence that was untenable at best.

In so doing, the Daily Kos members collectively mold the community’s norms in a democratic, grassroots

fashion. In the “Babygate” scandal, the majority of Kossacks discredited and dismissed the story as unfairly

damaging not only to Sarah Palin and Bristol, but perhaps more importantly to the community’s political import.

Trolls and “Purity Trolls”

Following President Obama’s election, Daily Kos saw a proliferation of not only trolls (often suspected

Republican sympathizers posing as diarists), but also so-called “purity trolls” from the far left lamenting Obama’s

perceived shift to the center. As was true in the Clinton debacle, users in the majority seek to quiet detracting

voices and “amplify” a reflection of their own stances. These informal norms are intended to discourage

behavior deemed divisive or spiteful. However, scholars have observed this “ideological amplification”

deepening online, particularly in political blogs like Daily Kos.30 The Internet allows people to filter their

information so that they reinforce rather than challenge their worldview, and in a sense this trend is apparent in

the structure and norms of the Daily Kos community.


Mitch Parsell argues that this narrowing of focus in virtual communities and the polarization that follows

can be harmful. He notes that site controls “actually reinforce the very attitude that makes these communities

problematic,” and faults external mechanisms of control for perpetuating the entrenchment and isolation of

community.31 A tradeoff for political effectiveness for sites like Daily Kos that position themselves as bastions

of partisanship seems to be these “information cocooning” in which deliberation and linking among like-minded

people leads to group polarization in the blogosphere32

That being said, Daily Kos members can carve out a reputation for themselves by consistently writing

thoughtful, thoroughly researched posts and cracking the “Recommended Diaries” list on a regular basis. Long-

time diarists on the site have garnered positive ratings, so there is some measure of standing in the community,

which would seem to quell Parsell’s fears of a reputation vacuum taking hold in narrowcast virtual

communities.33 Of course, part of diarists’ standing depends on their relationship with site contributors and

fellow members. Though discourse can slip into groupthink at times, Daily Kos is certainly not the “closed

community” Parsell warns of; it doesn’t have restricted membership, and ordinarily allows for healthy debate.

The ubiquity of trolls and “purity trolls” on Daily Kos is a testament to this openness—even if they rarely

receive the serious deliberation that a more orthodox diary might. Trolls seek to disrupt the community’s

consensus by sowing dissension, distracting from productive conversation and entrapping members emotionally.

For example, a diary on April 4, 2009, that was almost instantaneously flamed, “Has Obama Lied and Really a

Muslim?” received some 300 comments expressing disgust or mocking the poster. (It’s somewhat troubling but

probably inescapable that negative posts draw inordinate attention and backlash on Daily Kos.) The crux of

Doc91678’s diary: “President Obama genuflected and kissed the hand of King Abdullah of Saudi in and [sic] act

of subservience and loyalty….Is this man truly a Muslim ready to sell America out?”34

A surprising number of users pounced—and seemed to fall into the troll’s trap by engaging him.35 The

diary wasn’t deleted, however. Again, it appeared that many users were not aware of the site’s policy: after

administrators ban a user, there is no further recourse for scrubbing the diary itself.

“The answer to hate speech is more speech, not less,” argued Dcoronata, in justifying these rules. “Any

idiot can post here, as well as any genius; that's how progressive communities should work. You make your
arguments, and the community expresses its opinions of it; your ideas live or die based on your ability to cogently

explain and argue them. I'd rather have a thousand dull idiots and one brilliant speaker, than enforced silence.”36

The thread strays farther and farther from the actual post, and turns into a meta-dialogue, with josephk

challenging Dcoronata’s rationalization.

i am all for free speech, but to pretend that a blog is a 'free speech zone' is to NOT understand either free speech or blogs that
said, just because one has a differing POV from me doesn't mean i think them a 'troll', and in all honesty, the diarist, if a troll, is
the lowliest type the diarist should be banned nor for the views expressed, but partially for the incoherent expression of views
and that the diarist is likely a danger to themselves and others and that providing an outlet for that sickness does the diarist and
the diarist's community a disservice.37

TrueBlueMajority responded succinctly: “we are in charge of the diaries here and the community has certainly

passed its collective judgment on this one.”

In contrast to Doc91678, purity trolls are an entirely different breed. Though these disgruntled and

disillusioned far-left-wing diarists are mostly outliers, they point to an emerging split in the community, with

some members no longer holding Obama sacrosanct and others deploring the rants of these increasingly vocal

progressive purists. Though some commenters express sympathy, Wildthumb summed up the frustration of

many Kossacks in responding to a typical diary lambasting Obama’s bailout of the financial sector and

comparing it to President Bush’s WMD deception. “I'm afraid that this ‘impeach Obama’ crowd on Kos is

getting carried away lately,” Wildthumb wrote. “It seems that in a recent poll done by Kos here, Obama had the

approval of 88% of Kossacks. 6% disapproved of him. SIX PER CENT. But that six per cent is writing about

ONE THIRD of the diaries lately.”38

Indeed, Moulitsas recently admitted that, “It's getting harder to run a community like [Daily Kos] than it

used to be when Bush was president. Because then, we were all on the same page: ‘Bush sucks.’ I don't think

anyone disagreed with that. But, now we have power, and you have to walk that line between constructive

criticism and destructive criticism.”

‘There are people who say, "You're not being tough enough on Obama, he's going the corporatist route,’ and

then you have people who say, ‘Now you're just giving Republicans talking points,’ so you have a divided

community. Makes things a little livelier sometimes.”39 In a community driven by the belief that political power

stems from party unity, striking this balance could prove to be a very thorny challenge.
Conclusion

The tolerance for dissenting viewpoints on Daily Kos is unquestionably limited. Community norms

serve a purpose, though, in maintaining a liberal ideology and a cohesive message for the site. Daily Kos is an

unabashedly partisan blog with a transparent agenda: supporting and influencing the Democratic party. As such,

it is concerned less with presenting a diversity of opinions than with sparking debate that inspires a particular

brand of activism among the liberal community. But the question remains: what will Daily Kos’ mission be

going forward, and how will it retain a sense of unity without the motivating force of Obama’s candidacy? Some

have argued that netroots itself will slowly fizzle out as long as it lacks a forceful opposition. I would suggest

that with fragmenting support, no clear goal and a precipitous dip in site traffic, Daily Kos will need to continue

reconfiguring its community dynamics, using various modes of control as well as its built-in hierarchy as it

struggles to revive its vitality and zeitgeist. At the same time, this reevaluation of identity may actually open up a

more robust debate that is already manifesting itself in diaries with some members criticizing Obama for “selling

out” on issues like torture, gay marriage, and universal health care—while others defend him just as vigorously.

Mike "Hunter" Lazzaro, a contributing editor and site developer, has said that, “For community

members, Daily Kos is part town hall, part living room, part street corner and part corner bar.”40 In fact, the

expectations Daily Kos is trying to meet are so many and varied that it risks trying to be too many things to too

many people: discourse could get so convoluted, lost in the sheer size of the community, that it loses its potency.

On a site with the degree of openness Daily Kos has, it’s also difficult to maintain a consistent set of norms.

This necessitates Daily Kos’ system of hierarchy and filtering through normative and technological mechanisms.

As the particular cases I studied show, modes of control on Daily Kos include member participation (users

commenting on and rating posts); filtering (elevating diaries to the recommended or rescued list, autobanning

troll-rated posts); community norms (dictating what views are valued and what qualifies as appropriate content

for diaries); pressure (in the vein of the Hillary supporters’ boycott); and in extreme cases, administrative sanction

by Moulitsas himself. All in all, this multi-faceted system prevents Daily Kos from devolving into chaos.

In many ways, Daily Kos can be polarizing, an ideological “cocoon”41: diarists who agree with the

collective tend to be promoted to main page or recommended by other users. But part of the justification for
control is the larger agenda of orchestrating Democratic electoral success. Thus, the modes of control Daily Kos

employs keep diarists on-message and winnow out trolls or radicals who would reflect negatively on the liberal

cause. These aspects of control are democratic in nature, but behind the façade of grassroots movement building

is a very deliberate structure enforcing relations between majority and minority voices.

The norms of Daily Kos are structured to above all generate political action, and as a collective, its

members shape the community through both official and unofficial forms of control. That the core members

keep coming back to Daily Kos proves that the site is not a community of exit, as it was for many Clinton’s

supporters and trolls who engage in drive-by-vandalism. Even if some members were turned off by the pungent

discourse in threads like the “Babygate” diary, they retained faith in the community to collectively dissect and

scrutinize the story. And hough Daily Kos may be experiencing a period of somewhat directionless drifting, it

continues to provide a forum for members to vent, mobilize, or debate the day’s political news. The sites’ norms

and hierarchy arose and continue to be shaped by these conversations among members with divergent

perspectives, evolving out of passionate debate rather than homogeneity. Harnessing this debate will be critical if

Daily Kos is to achieve a progressive movement marked by true reform of the Democratic Party.

References
1
Bill McKibben, “The Hope of the Web,” New York Review of Books, April 27, 2006.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18910
2
Henry Farrell, "Bloggers and Parties: Can the Netroots Reshape American Democracy?" Boston
Review, September/October 2006. http://www.bostonreview.net/BR31.5/farrell.php
3
“About Daily Kos.” http://www.dailykos.com/special/about2
4
Deborah Howell, “Getting the Story on Jack Abramoff,” The Washington Post, January 15, 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011400859.html
5
Simon Owens, “How Political Diarists Power RedState, Daily Kos,” MediaShift, October 21, 2008.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/10/how-political-diarists-power-redstate-daily-kos295.html
6
http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=sm8dailykos
7
Mike Lazzaro, "Moderate This! Kos' Tech Tricks for Traffic, Trolls, and Threads That Won't
End," Mother Jones, June 26, 2007.
8
“Diary Guidelines,” Daily Kos FAQ.
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/DailyKos_FAQ#Writing_diaries
Note: dKosopedia is a collaborative “wiki” encyclopedia that expands on many of Daily Kos’ rules, norms, FAQs,
etc. It also lays out specific policy positions for issues like abortion or the Iraq War, and political history through a
progressive lens.
9
gregoryjames. “Definition of Hillary Clinton = Ignorant B****.” Weblog entry. Daily Kos. May
24, 2008. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/24/522089/-Definition-of-Hillary-
ClintonIgnorant-B****w-poll
10
metal prophet. Weblog comment. “Definition of Hillary Clinton= Ignorant B****.” May 24, 2008.
11
liquidstoke. Weblog comment. Ibid.
12
BarbinMD. Weblog comment. Ibid.
13
jbjowe. Weblog comment. Ibid.
14
Jotorious. Weblog comment. Ibid.
15
“Diary Guidelines,” Daily Kos FAQ.
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/DailyKos_FAQ#Controversial_Diary_Topics
16
Don Hazen, “Markos 'Kos' Moulitsas on Obama, Twittering, Fighting the Blue Dogs, and the
Major Changes Coming,” Alternet, May 4, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/139605/markos_%27kos%27_moulitsas_on_obama,_twitterin
g,_fighting_the_blue_dogs,_and_the_major_changes_coming/
17
Peter Jukes, “Flaming for Obama,” Prospect Magazine, October 2008, 151.
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10398
18
Alegre. “Writers Strike at DailyKos.” Weblog entry. Daily Kos. March 14, 2008.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/14/20827/4727/132/476843
19
Kos. “Clinton civil war.” Weblog entry. Daily Kos. March 17, 2008.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/17/12417/1285/527/478498
20
Henry Farrell and Melissa Schwartberg, “Norms, Minorities, and Collective Choice Online,” Ethics
& International Affairs 22.4 (Winter 2008): December 30, 2008.
21
ArcXIX. “Sarah Palin is NOT the Mother [Photos + Video].” Weblog entry. Daily Kos.
August 30, 2008. <http://ingrimayne.com/spp/sarahPalinPregnant.html>
Note: Though the author removed the diary, most certainly bowing to community pressure, it remains accessible through
Google cache. Just another example of the Internet’s permanence.
22
Yamara. Weblog comment. ““Sarah Palin is NOT the Mother.” August 30, 2008.
As on Daily Kos, it remains difficult to hold the site operator liable for libel, or to reveal the identity of the blogger who
originated the salacious claims.
23
Dem in the heart of Texas. Ibid.
24
WIds. Ibid.
25
leftyboy666. Ibid.
26
Paolo. Ibid.
27
Howard Kurtz, “Pregnant Pause,” The Washington Post, September 2, 2008.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/09/02/AR2008090200489_pf.html
28
“Controversial 9/11 Diaries,” Daily Kos FAQ.
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/DailyKos_FAQ#Controversial_Diary_Topics
“DailyKos accepts that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by agents of Al-Qaeda. It is forbidden to
write diaries that:
1. refer to claims that American, British, Israeli, or any government assisted in the attacks
2. refer to claims that the airplanes that crashed into the WTC and Pentagon were not the cause of
the damage to those buildings or their subsequent collapse.
Authoring or recommending these diaries may result in banning from Daily Kos.”
29
Doc91678. “Has Obama Lied and Really a Muslim?” Weblog entry. Daily Kos. April 4, 2009.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/4/716499/-Has-Obama-Lied-and-Really-a-Muslim
30
Nicholas Carr, “The Great Unbundling,” The Big Switch (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008),
164.
31
Mitch Parsell, “Pernicious virtual communities: Identity, polarization and the Web 2.0,” Ethics and
Information Technology 10 (2008): 43.
32
Cass Sunstein, “Neither Hayek nor Habermas,” Public Choice 134 (2008): 87-95.
33
Mitch Parsell, 54.
34
Doc91678. “Has Obama Lied and Really a Muslim?” Weblog entry. Daily Kos. April 4, 2009.
35
For instance: “Shut the f-ck up, Senator McCain,” wrote Angry Mouse; “PLEASE DELETE
THIS P.O.S. DIARY,” begged another poster.
36
Dcoronata. Weblog comment. “Has Obama Lied and Really a Muslim?” Daily Kos. April 4, 2009.
37
josephk. Ibid.
38
Wildthumb. Weblog comment. “Obama is lying.” disrael. May 2, 2009.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/2/727218/-Obama-is-lying
39
Don Hazen, “Meet Markos 'Kos' Moulitsas,” Mother Jones, May 4, 2009.
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2009/05/meet-markos-kos-moulitsas
40
Mike Lazzaro, “A More Perfect Cacophony: Building Daily Kos,” Mother Jones, June 26, 2007.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/06/more-perfect-cacophony-building-daily-kos
41
Henry Farrell, Eric Lawrence, and John Sides, "Self-Selection or Deliberation? Blog Readership,
Participation, and Polarization in American Politics," July 1, 2008.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1151490

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