Politics and Politeness: Analysis of Incivility on Twitter During the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary

Abstract

In the past decade, social networking sites have become central forums for public discourse and political engagement. Of particular interest is the role that Twitter plays in the facilitation of political discourse. To this end, the existing literature argues that a healthy political discussion space is key to maintaining a trusting and robust democratic society. Using Suler’s online disinhibition effect as a theoretical orientation, this study seeks to address the extent of incivility on Twitter in discourse regarding the top three 2020 Democratic primary candidates. A total corpus of 18,237,296 tweets was analyzed in an effort to assess the extent to which incivility dominated Twitter discourse surrounding these candidates. Our results reveal that tweets that mention Senator Elizabeth Warren were associated with higher levels of uncivil discourse than tweets that mentioned Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden. Interestingly, there does not appear to be a relationship with anonymity and incivility, as uncivil tweets were just as likely to originate from tweets that identified users’ names as they were to originate from anonymous or pseudonymous accounts. Finally, our findings provide evidence that certain policy issues are more closely related to uncivil discourse than others. Through the use of k-means clustering, our findings illustrate that the issue of gun control and immigration is closely related with mentions of Warren and fiscal policy with Sanders; however, we did not find any policy keywords linked to Biden.

The medium is the message: toxicity declines in structured vs unstructured online deliberations

“…Another study analyzing 18 million tweets surrounding political candidates in America revealed associations between certain candidates and incivility discourse, with specific policy issues closely linked to uncivil discourse. Linking these results through k-means clustering, the study illustrates that gun control and immigration are closely related to mentions of controversial candidates [28]. Other research indicates there is an important distinction to make here; impoliteness is directed at individuals, while incivility is predominantly driven by the topic.…”

“…In reality, civility, a fundamental norm for deliberative discourse, is frequently violated in online discussions, transforming platforms into areas rife with frustration, hate, and incivility, often displayed through insults and flaming. The escalating concern about online incivility is evident among the American public, with 68% identifying it as a "major problem" and nearly 90% recognizing its severe consequences, encompassing cyberbullying, harassment, violence, hate crimes, intimidation, threats, intolerance, and a diminished sense of safety in public spaces [27,28]. Several scholars underscore that incivility, rather than civility, prevails in online conversations, despite the potential for political discussion on social media [26,29,30].…”

Who supports Bernie? Analyzing identity and ideological variation on Twitter during the 2020 democratic primaries

“…Tweets in this cluster relied heavily upon hashtags to demonstrate their support for Bernie and his platform of signature issues; signaling support by writing, “#MedicareForAll,” “#BernieBeatsTrump.” “#Bernie2020,” “#NotMeUs” which was followed or preceded by the message of “Vote for Bernie.” Hashtags symbolically convey a person’s stance and are a mechanism for advocating for one’s position [ 76 ]. We coded this cluster as ‘moderate because most of the hashtags passively named issues or endorsement of Bernie, thereby upholding civility in discussions of politics [ 77 ].…”

Exploring food poverty experiences in the German Twitter-Sphere

“…The analysis of discourses surrounding hashtags on Twitter has been applied across various disciplines and for diverse purposes, such as sustainability discourses [46,47], political discourses [48,49] or health and nutrition discourses [45,50,51]. These studies have demonstrated that Twitter data are valuable for gaining insights into perspectives that are often challenging to access and underrepresented in empirical social research.…”