Incivility in public discussions

Two trends have marked the development of U.S. cable television news in recent years: a blurring of hard and soft news and an increase in overt partisanship. This paper reports the results of 2 studies that provide insight into the nature and impact of these trends. The first study analyzes national survey data to identify the factors that lead political partisans to choose particular cable television news networks and programs. The second study employs experimental methods to demonstrate how viewers’ partisan leanings influence their perceptions of content from CNN, Fox News, and The Daily Show. We found evidence of a relative hostile media phenomenon, in which partisans perceive more bias in programs that do not align with their own political perspective. Furthermore, the results indicate that partisanship informs viewers’ perceptions of news content as interesting and informative.

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.

Although incivility is an increasing concern among scholars and the public, explanations for this phenomenon sometimes overlook the role of computer‐mediated communication. Drawing from the social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE), we consider incivility as a form of identity performance occurring in the visually anonymous contexts that are typical online. Specifically, we examine partisan political identities and intergroup factors as predictors of incivility in a newspaper discussion forum. Contrary to expectations, conservatives were less likely to be uncivil as the proportion of ingroup members (i.e., other conservatives) in the discussion increased and less sensitive to incivility directed at outgroup members (i.e., liberals) than were nonconservatives. Audience members had more extreme evaluations of uncivil comments made by partisans than nonpartisans.

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