– The contact with our readers, and creating an open discussion about our journalistic work, is important to us. We’re seeing several news websites closing their commenting sections. We want to do the opposite and try to find new solutions that we hope can improve and increase the quality of the debates. Ifrågasätt has a really interesting service that we hope can lead to less problems with trolls and hate speech, says Christer S. Johnsen, head of editorial development at Adresseavisen.
With Adresseavisen [1] Norway becomes the first international launch of Ifrågasätt, but more are already planned. The launch in Norway therefore becomes proof that Ifrågasätt’s services are ready to expand internationally.
– After proving our solution on the Swedish market and seeing how reading time, page views and the quality of comments increase, Adresseavisen becomes the first step in our international journey, says Gustav Hjärn, CEO and founder of Ifrågasätt. I’m of course very happy to see Adresseavisen, being part of a prosperous media group and one of the five largest newspapers in Norway, choose Ifrågasätt.
Background:
Many newspapers in Norway have shut down the possibility to comment on news due to problems with hate speech and harassment, according to Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s Digital News Report 2019. According to the report more than one in six news readers in Norway comments on news in some way, either via social media or on news sites that still offers a commenting service.
Ifrågasätt helps media sites to engage their visitors to increase the visitors’ loyalty and return frequency, while combatting hate speech and trolls. More visitors that stay longer and return more often give the websites better opportunities to increase revenue. Ifrågasätt can currently be found on about 30 newspapers, among them Sweden’s largest daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s largest regional newspaper Göteborgs-Posten and the Nordics’ largest business journal Dagens industri, and more are on the way, both domestically and internationally.
(https://www.ifragasatt.se [2])
