Both hope to prevent personal attacks on their staff and family, avoid disrespectful and unpleasant comments, and overall obscene language. In one of her latest posts, “Of bullies and the presumption of competence” the comments include suggested readings on the topic, motivating quotes, reinforcement, and stories of those who have been in similar situations. A post by Buzzfeed, “Eric Trump Illegally Posted A Photo of His Marked Ballot” triggered 137 comments, as of November 8pm. The comments call Eric Trump and his father, Donald Trump, “douchebag”, one user referred the commenters as “assholes and fucktards”, and another said, “Looks like a demented soon to be serial killer.” As mentioned, the guidelines on commenting are similar amongst both websites yet the quality of the comments are immense. On Buzzfeed, the comments are offensive, not relevant to the topic, and attack the Trump family as well as other Buzzfeed users. Although they prohibit “trolling” many of the users generate discussions by making attacks to a person’s point of view or simply their spelling and grammar. For instance, a user disclosing her support for Hillary Clinton was backlashed by, presumably Trump supporters, for a typo in her …show more content…
Jess monitors the comments on her website which is manageable for her small blog. Buzzfeed has a considerably large audience. The high volume of comments and visitors, especially during Election Night, might intervene with how they supervise the comments. Although, to their advantage, Buzzfeed allows users to report messages deemed inappropriate. Overall, flaming which Patrick B. O’Sullivan and Andrew J. Flanagin describe as, hostile and aggressive communicative behavior is more evident in Buzzfeed which has an open comment policy. The behavior in the online discussion was more aggressive, hostile, and profanity-laced which are all characteristics of flaming. The internet along with open comment features allow users to engage in these discussions. Qing Li states that cyberbullying is impersonal and face-to-face discussions are more intimidating, so it is likely that these conversations would not occur in person but do so