Research on incivility in political communication usually defines uncivil communication as a violation of established norms. Few studies, however, have specified these norms and corroborated them using relevant theoretical concepts. This article aims at strengthening the foundations of incivility research by analytically reconstructing the potential normative expectations of communication participants toward the behavior of others in offline and online political communication. We propose that these expectations can be considered as communication norms, which enable cooperative communication in political debates and conflicts. We use action theory, evolutionary anthropology, and linguistics to propose a norm concept that differentiates five communication norms: an information norm, a modality norm, a process norm, a relation norm, and a context norm. Drawing on these norms, we propose new definitions of incivility and civility. We also provide a comprehensive typology of norm violations that can be used as a heuristic for empirical research.
Incivility in public online discussions has received much scholarly attention in recent years. Still, there is controversy regarding what exactly constitutes incivility and hardly any study has examined in depth what different participants of online discussions perceive as uncivil. Building on a new theoretical approach to incivility as a violation of communication norms, this study aims to close this research gap: In five heterogenous focus groups, different types of actors in online discussions, namely community managers, users, and members of online activist groups, discussed what they perceive as norm-violating and how these violations differ in terms of severity. Results suggest that incivility is a multidimensional construct and that the severity of different norm violations varies significantly. Although the actors share a relatively large common ground as to what they perceive as uncivil, several role-specific perceptions and individual evaluation criteria become apparent. Based on the results, a differentiated typology of perceived incivility in public online discussions is developed.
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