What Kind of Disagreement Favors Reason-Giving? Analyzing Online Political Discussions across the Broader Public Sphere

Abstract

This study adopts a systemic approach, focusing on real-world online discussions in legislative-, media-, and activist-based forums, to explore a set of factors that affects reasoned disagreement in digital environments. While conventional analysis investigates the effects of disagreement on civic and political participation, this study unpacks forms of disagreement that retain a principled link with reason-giving. Our findings demonstrate that context matters for shaping online communication, but that other variables have even stronger correlations. Specifically, moderating disagreement—conceptualized as a way of disagreeing that nevertheless signals a background of agreement in the conversation—strongly increases the likelihood of justificatory behavior, and it does so in more categories than bold disagreement. In conclusion, we argue that forms of disagreement and their respective consequences deserve more empirical and normative attention, not only to advance debates on deliberation but also to critically understand the communicative complexities in a new media landscape.

The Integrative Complexity of Online User Comments Across Different Types of Democracy and Discussion Arenas

“…Second, the integrative complexity of online user comments was higher in arenas that are used primarily for issue- rather than preference-driven discussions. This supports prior research that found opinion diversity and disagreement to encourage the extent of justifications in such posts (Maia et al 2020; Zhang et al 2013). It suggests that the “imagined affordances” (Nagy and Neff 2015: 1) of different discussion arenas indeed frame how debate participants primarily use these spaces in accordance with how they think they are expected to act.…”

“…Debates are characterized by in-group acknowledgment (Freelon 2015) and polarization (Yarchi et al 2020)—also in non-U.S. contexts such as Germany and Australia, where Twitter users “are substantially more likely to engage with supportive rather than oppositional networks” (Vaccari et al 2016: 6; Bruns et al 2017). Likewise, user comments on the Facebook pages of partisan civic organizations were found to contain strongly homogeneous views (Maia et al 2020) along with high levels of negative emotions (Esau et al 2020). In addition, partisan media commonly make their audience dislike the opposition (Levendusky 2013).…”

Is Constructive Engagement Online a Lost Cause? Toxic Outrage in Online User Comments Across Democratic Political Systems and Discussion Arenas

“…While hashtags could potentially bring together individuals with different views, in reality, they primarily integrate those with similar positions. Likewise, research suggests that the Facebook pages of partisan collective actors and alternative media are used primarily for discussions among like-minded people (Maia & Rezende, 2016; Maia et al, 2021). In contrast, the website comment sections and Facebook pages of mainstream news media assemble a readership base that is connected by an interest in the topic of the original article (Freelon, 2015) and whose political views have been shown to be rather diverse (Nelson & Webster, 2017).…”

Supporting digital discourse? The deliberative function of links on Twitter

“…Research shows that frequent posters have a particular habit to support their statements with reasons (Graham and Wright, 2014) and that the justification levels are higher in user-generated discussions in countries with liberal than with polarized pluralist media systems (Ruiz et al, 2011). Generally, online debaters ground their assertions more regularly in light of opinion diversity and disagreement (Maia et al, 2020).…”