Conservatives and Incivility

The (limited) effects of target characteristics on public opinion of hate speech laws

“…This adds to the literature on partisan animosity as previous work shows that partisans hold negative feelings towards the opposing party (Iyengar et al 2012), are more forgiving to in-partisans (Costa et al 2020), display greater negativity when out-party politicians make moral violations (Walter and Redlawsk 2021), are more willing to tolerate and support preferential treatment of in-partisans (Lelkes and Westwood 2016, p. 498) and to harm or punish out-partisans (Westwood et al 2019), particularly when faced with a threat to their partisan identity (Amira et al 2021). Partisans may harbour negative feelings about their political opponents (Iyengar et al 2019) and tend to judge them harsher for political behavior (Bisgaard 2019;Muddiman 2021), but they might align on the some kinds of norm violations. The results of the present paper are rather reconciling as partisans are capable of putting their political divides aside and apply restrictions of hate speech consistently in the case of banning hate speech…”

“…First, whether the statement was targeting politicians or voters was manipulated to assess whether are more restrictive when statements are targeting elites compared to ordinary citizens (Muddiman 2021). Second, I manipulated the valence of the targeted issue position (e.g.…”

“…These partisan differences may be reinforced by increasing loathing across partisan lines (Iyengar et al 2012;Iyengar et al 2019;Iyengar and Westwood 2015) and political sectarianism (Finkel et al 2020), thereby influencing perceptions of what hate is. Partisan allegiance selectively influences blame attribution (Bisgaard 2019), drives social media engagement (Rathje et al 2021;Yu et al 2021;Osmundsen et al 2021;Brady et al 2017), shapes perceptions of hostile rhetoric (Muddiman 2017;Mutz 2015;Stevens et al 2015), and influences willingness to censor political opponents (Amira et al 2021;Ashokkumar et al 2020;Lelkes and Westwood 2016). Some evidence even suggests that partisans prioritize partisanship over democracy (Graham and Svolik 2020;Frederiksen 2022;Simonovits et al 2022;Svolik 2018), dehumanize members of the opposing party (Martherus et al 2021;Moore-Berg et al 2020), and increasingly condone political violence if the other side wins (Kalmoe and Mason 2022).…”

“…When polls ask "would you favor or oppose a law that would make it illegal to say offensive or insulting things in public about [a group]" (Cato 2017), what constitutes "offensive or insulting things" depends on the targeted group. For example, people might imagine using racial epithets about Black Americans, but only uncivil partisan derogation 1 See Muddiman (2021) and Skytte (2021) for notable exceptions for (say) Republicans. In short, this conflates the two key dimensions of hate speech -the severity and the target -making it impossible to differentiate their effects which provides misleading interpretations of public opinion on regulating hate speech.…”

Over-Time Trends in Incivility on Social Media: Evidence From Political, Non-Political, and Mixed Sub-Reddits Over Eleven Years

“…or "thumb-up" uncivil comments (Rains et al, 2017;Kim et al, 2020), indicating liberals agree with or endorse uncivil expressions; this may lead liberals to express uncivilly to gain agreement from their peers. And yet, a study on unacceptable and uncivil behavior in US politics finds that Republicans and Democrats react in similar ways to uncivil messages (Muddiman, 2021). We therefore ask: RQ4: Have there been changes in incivility between politically liberal and conservative groups?…”