Gaming meets journalism: HuffPo takes a step

Ran across some really cool news today. Huffington Post announced that it is implementing a badge system as part of a way to build up its user community. For now you have three possible badges on the site: one for having a lot of social connections across the site, one for adding a lot of comments, and one for flagging inappropriate comments that ultimately lead to deletion.

This is huge, and I can’t state this enough. It’s taking some of the game-oriented concepts found in location-based apps such as Foursquare or Gowalla and implementing them in news delivery. These simple games build on the notion that object collection in gaming can be rewarding, and by applying them to news formats HuffPo encourages behaviors complementary to what the news site wants to accomplish.

When I got to Lehigh I hardly imagined being the guy advocating gaming concepts in news, but here I go again. I have already said quite a bit about gaming and news, such as the potential with Foursquare, Gowalla, and transmedia as a way of bringing context to our news (the latter of which is an offshoot of a great panel at SXSW), but it’s emerged as a running theme on this blog over the course of the year

This is not an entirely new idea. Gawker, for example, uses tiered comments by giving the community’s best users a star icon. Gizmodo also recently unveiled a tiered system where valued users get better placement in the commenting thread. It’s a recognition of a lesson we’ve learned in blogland: comments and community are content that should be valued in a same what that the original article should be valued.

Here’s what I love about HuffPo is doing by taking this to another level: the gaming aspect has a purpose.

The third badge, called “Moderator,” is given to those who are on the lookout for comments that clash with the site’s mission of civility. The concept of community moderation in comments is not new, of course, with Slashdot being a good example of how it can work well. The badge isn’t given for random flagging, though, but rather for flagging posts that eventually get deleted. Quality over quantity when it comes to moderation.

I wonder whether in doing it this way it also helps teach the user community about the site’s values by having people flag inappropriate comments with the site’s values and mission in mind. At the SXSW “Future of Context” panel we talked about gaming as a type of learning about the news, but this could be an extension of that by showing users what it means to be a user in a news community.

At the same time, the “Superuser” badge (boo for stealing that one so shamelessly from Foursquare) is given to prolific commenters. So right away you have two badges that work together to increase comment volume while also allowing for ways to up the quality.

There are good reasons to think HuffPo’s system is going to work. Nieman Lab noted that by emphasizing quality in comments it actually led to more and better comments in the Gawker universe of products. This makes logical sense; if I think my post is going to be buried by the community, I will try to make it entertaining, witty, insightful, etc.

The one I’m excited about is the “Networker” badge because this is at the heart of the scholarly stuff I think about. My dissertation argued a new type of social capital known as Web-network social capital, which basically consists of the networks and ties created in user communities for the purposes of building that online community. The badge looks like it has potentinal to start increasing and rewarding network ties. We’ve already started seeing people thinking about Farmville and the potential for building social ties through gaming. WNSC has the potential to explain some of what we’re seeing, and sites that look to build it are helping to create something unique in the process.

When I argued for WNSC, I was looking broadly at social networks and blogs. What excites me about gaming entering the news is that this is a further area for study and a potential growth area for news sites interested in building up communities that help serve a site’s core mission.

HuffPo says it will be adding more (my suggestion: “I’m on a boat”). Of all the new avenues I’ve seen in news this year, Gowalla tours and this effort by HuffPo are two that have my eye. Gaming holds a lot of potential for news outlets, and I hope they’re paying attention.

The finish line, nearly!

In 48 hours, my dissertation final draft will be done and I’ll ship this thing out to my committee before my July 16 defense date. I’m exhausted from too many 15-hour days, but I sometimes marvel at the stamina I’ve acquired for research in graduate school.

I’ll wait to post a full abstract until this thing is fully defended, because I’m always a little nervous about putting the cart before the horse. But real briefly, I’ll say what it’s about. I surveyed a bunch of online community users of various types and over various sites to get a sense of their social ties. I tapped into ideas of social capital first theorized by Pierre Bourdieu and made famous by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone.

The basic idea is that the thickness and the extension of peoples’ social networks is a powerful predictor of how we help one another and get involved in everyday civic life, types of engagment that span from voting to the reciprocity that comes with giving money to a friend in need.

Typically researchers measure offline social capital (offline ties for real-world local benefit) and online social capital (ties formed online for real-world local benefit). I measured those two as well as a third new variable I’ve created called virtual social capital, which measures online ties created for non-local beneft (I’m calling it Distance Engagement).

The one thing I can say so far is my created variable works big time as a distinct way of measuring online ties. So I’m thrilled about that.

But I’ve found some other stuff related to motivations for using online communities, social bonds, and the forms of engagement. I’ll save those results for later, save this teaser: social media doesn’t do squat for local engagement as a general predictor across all different types of sites, but it does surprising things for online forms of activism and helping. And the motivations/needs people bring to their media use is very important in determining how this all works. Viva la Media Choice Model!

Anyhow, 48 hours and I’ll send this thing out. Defense in 11 days, yikes!