The name may sound like a kindergarten initiative, but government professor Mark Rom’s “politeness project” is far from elementary.

In an attempt to reduce fiery exchanges in online political forums, Rom will take students and transform them into Internet vigilantes devoted to battling racism, sexism and polarized politics online.

The group, selected from Rom’s U.S. Political Systems course, will post courteous responses, called “politeness interventions,” to charged arguments fought in the comment sections of political articles. Rom said he hopes that these comments will cure what he considers an extremist syndrome that has infected political speech.

“I come from the perspective of a realist,” he said. “We’re not planning to change the world, but it’s also realistic to think that you can improve it in some small ways.”

The project will target five websites and blogs — two conservative, two liberal and one neutral — and Rom is currently choosing the specific sites based on high daily traffic, paying particular attention to those that list their most popular blog posts on their home pages. He said he wants to concentrate on posts that will be viewed most frequently — where his project’s input will have the largest impact.

Sites like Townhall.com, The Huffington Post and The Washington Post have made the cut, although the list of websites has yet to be finalized.

Rom chose to focus on Internet forums because of the feasibility of scheduling and the safety that online anonymity provides. Talk radio and town hall meetings do not provide similarly ample opportunities to change the nature of the discussions, according to Rom.

“You’re not actually dealing with people,” he said of the online approach. “You’re dealing with their writing, so you’re one step removed from the real hostility.”

A self-proclaimed frequenter of political websites, Rom began individually posting “politeness interventions” a week before Christmas after he kept noticing the hateful nature of certain comments. He soon found that his contributions were catching on, causing a change in the tenor of the conversation.

Rom hopes that at least 25 of his 100 USPS students will join him in his endeavor. According to a recent anonymous class poll, 30 students expressed interest in participating in the project.

One of these students, Sarah Clark (MSB ’13), is excited to delve into the project and explore its ties to cognitive science.

“In large groups, responding politely to rudeness cuts off the oxygen of an audience and eventually exposes the rudeness as unacceptably aggressive,” she said. “Professor Rom’s work is wonderful because it will give peaceful resisters quantifiable information we can use to strengthen our resolve.”

The student volunteers will begin the project by tracking blogs to understand the discussions, and the National Institutes of Health will train the students to become human subject researchers.

Rom hopes to start the conversational aspect of his initiative in March and publish his findings in either a political science or media studies journal in May.