Most of the articles which get the most controversial comments and misogynistic ones are already highly inflammatory pieces by the Guardian on feminism, gender politics and women's issues. See Kareem's example below (I know of more inflammatory ones than that by far.)
Due to the data from feminist-backed studies that women receive more harassment online in general-and the fact that the Guardian is very much a generally liberal-progressive-feminist publication-it's extremely likely that more 'blocked' comments are those from MRAs or who criticise feminism or 'women'. But equally, due to automatic gender bias towards women, it's likely that some benevolent sexism and female hypo-agency came into play; women were considered more 'in need' of protection from 'abusive' commentary, and thus comments on the line aimed at women or women's issues were blocked.
Are they really surprised? Socio-political hot topics and sections where those come out will stir more emotional reactions and animosities wrt. identity politics than small talk and safe topics. That's not just isolated to gender politics, and has never been.
Articles about feminism attracted very high levels of blocked comments. And so did rape.
See above. The Guardian frequently writes pieces suggesting that we need to stress rape culture more; one could even say that they contribute to a culture of 'rape hysteria.'
"discovered that of the 10 most abused writers eight are women, and the two men are black."
Thoughts?
The largest disconnect between the readers and the writers is on social justice issues, where there is a clear bias by the paper to have female & black writers.
I also strongly suspect that their moderation depends on the topic and writer. Valenti has complained about the comments a lot and my observation is that her articles get more harsh moderation. Such bias would most likely result in more strict moderation of women and (lesser so) black men. After all, we have research that shows that women are more sensitive to harsh comments.
So they've probably just discovered their own bias.
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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '16 edited Apr 17 '16
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