How to Handle a Crowd: The Art of Creating Healthy and Dynamic Online Communities

The tools we once hailed for their power to connect people and spark creativity can also be hotbeds of hate and harassment, and platforms like Facebook and YouTube are under fire for either too much or too little moderationeven though most people arent even sure what moderation means. What we do know is that creating and maintaining healthy online communities isnt easy. Luckily, Anika Gupta is here to explain what makes some online communities tickand others explode.

Over the course of two years of graduate research at MIT, Gupta interviewed moderators whod worked on the sidelines of gamer forums and in the trenches of online news comments sections. She spoke with professional and volunteer moderators. In How to Handle a Crowd, she builds on that initial fascination and connects it to new and important issues around how we use the internet to create community.

She interviews people who have built and sustained fascinating online communities in our unpredictable digital climate, and dives deep with activists, organizers, journalists, and executives to find out what strategies work best for them. Is there really such a thing as a recipe for success? See more