Online Community Management

With the growth and prevalence of online communities, online community management has gained significant relevance over the years. This entry provides an overview on the concepts of community management and moderation in the realm of online political communication, which takes place on various platforms. These include platforms for citizen participation processes, discussion forums as well as the websites or social media presences of news outlets, political parties, or other organizations and collectives from the political and civil society sectors. First, we give an overview on definitions of online communities, online community management and online moderation. Second, we outline and compare different actors in online communities and their moderation roles, that is, professional community managers versus lay moderators in the form of volunteer moderators, ordinary users, and activists. Third, we discuss the broader normative implications of online community management from a democratic standpoint and in the context of deliberative democracy.