Online Community Engagement Opens the Door to Inappropriate Speech
A leading media property covering hyperlocal news in hundreds of local markets across the U.S. looked to expand its community engagement and interactions. The client had over 400 internal team members focused on producing content and an audience of over 10 million monthly unique visitors.
To take advantage of this large market, the client sought to draw readership and retention with interaction. Their processes for moderating and approving content from a distributed workforce of several thousand journalists worked well, so they began allowing readers to comment on articles and begin discussions. However, they were soon flooded daily with comments that were offensive, inappropriate, factually incorrect, harassing, defaming, or vulgar in nature. The client faced an unexpected challenge in driving engagement while struggling to moderate user content.
Outsourced Assivo Content Moderation to Create a Welcoming Forum
Assivo was no stranger to the obstacles of client online community building. The team immediately assessed the situation and staffed 4 content moderators and a project leader to the task. Working with the client to understand their parameters for acceptable user-generated comments, Assivo trained the team on the requirements and set up a content moderation workflow to begin reviewing and cleaning the comment backlog.
Open Dialogue for Increased Engagement in a Productive Fashion
Assivo staff sorted through the entire community for feedback, auditing the language used and ensuring that it met the client’s new set of standards. Content deemed offensive or in opposition to the client’s guidelines were removed. Once completed, the team shifted to monitoring new comments on a daily basis to ensure inappropriate comments were removed and addressed in real time. The client was able to provide its readership with a neutral, inoffensive, and pleasant place to interact with one another while effectively managing its own liabilities.
