Perceptions of Uncivil Discourse Online: An Examination of Types and Predictors

Abstract

<jats:p> Incivility in public discourse has become a pressing concern of citizens and scholars alike, but most research has focused narrowly on incivility in elite discourse. The present study examines how the lay public perceives incivility, using two surveys to track differences in perceptions of specific types of uncivil speech and identify predictors of those perceptions. The results show that different types of incivility elicit different responses. In particular, name-calling and vulgarity were rated as more uncivil than were other speech acts. In addition, several demographic, personality, and news consumption variables were analyzed as predictors of incivility perceptions. </jats:p>

Female journalists under attack? Explaining gender differences in reactions to audiences’ attacks

“…The stress-avoidance link among journalists shown here thus supports the theories on stress leading to avoidance (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984;Roth and Cohen, 1986) and on gendered stress due to gender socialization (Barnett, 1993;Dedovic et al, 2009;Matud, 2004). Our theoretical framework may also help to explain empirical, but not yet theoretically embedded, findings of female journalists and women generally seeming more upset by online harassment than their male equivalents (Binns, 2017;Kenski et al, 2017;Pew Research Center, 2014). These findings suggest that changing the impact of attacks is a long-term, societal task of addressing gender socialization that goes beyond narrower strategies such as moderating harassing online comments.…”

“…Consistent with the theoretical reasoning on gender-typed self-concepts and the empirical evidence on gendered stress (Dedovic et al, 2009;Eagly and Wood, 2011;Kenski et al, 2017;Rudolph and Hammen, 1999), we expect that the gender difference in the response to attacks is a result of gender socialization. We assume that female journalists, just as women on average, are socialized into a self-concept that determines how attacks, here conceptualized as interpersonal events, are perceived and interpreted.…”

“…Women rate such events as more negative and less controllable than men do, even though the events experienced by women and men are similar in nature and number (Matud, 2004). This phenomenon has also been observed for attacking and harassing feedback: compared with men, women perceive a broader range of social-sexual behaviors to be forms of harassment (Rotundo et al, 2001), are more sensitive to uncivil online comments (Kenski et al, 2017), and are more upset by online attacks (Pew Research Center, 2014).…”

“…Similar accounts by men are rare. Combined with other evidence showing that online harassment generally affects women more strongly than men (Kenski et al, 2017;Pew Research Center, 2014), this suggests that female public figures might be more likely than male public figures to use avoidance strategies as responses to attacks.…”

Incivility and Political Identity on the Internet: Intergroup Factors as Predictors of Incivility in Discussions of News Online

“…This possibility is consistent with how norms and group identities function in social movements (Smith, Thomas, & McGarty, ) along with evidence that conservatives and liberals may view incivility differently (Kenski, Coe, & Rains, ). Indeed, research showing that conservatives are less likely to perceive messages as uncivil (Kenski et al, ) suggests that conservatives may be less likely than their nonconservative counterparts to react to incivility. Whereas conservatives do not change how they express themselves, nonconservatives become more reactive to group membership and the presence of incivility.…”