Connective Effervescence and Streaming Chat During Political Debates

Abstract

Recent advancements in online streaming technologies have re-centered the audience as an important part of live broadcasts, including live political events. In fall 2020, each of the U.S. presidential and vice presidential debates were streamed on a number of online platforms that provided an integrated streaming chat where the public could comment in real-time alongside the live debate video. Viewers could simultaneously tune into what the candidates were saying and see what a sample of their peers thought about the candidates. This study examines large samples of comments made in social chat feeds during the livestreamed debates on the ABC News, NBC News, and Fox News Facebook pages to quantify key features associated with the quality of political discussion on these platforms. The results reveal that consistent with the quasi-anonymous, constrained nature of dynamic chat, the comments made are generally short, include a substantial degree of toxicity and insults, and differ significantly in their content across platforms. These findings underscore the importance of further study of online streaming chat as a new source of potential influence on political attitudes and behavior.

Representation and Aggression in Digital Racial Conflict: Analyzing Public Comments during Live-Streamed News of Racial Justice Protests

“…On the other hand, the content of expression matters for democratic norms of non-violence and racial equality and the role of social position in breaking the norms. First, we found a high level of aggressive and threatening content, including open calls for violence, consistent with studies of live digital comments in election contexts (Ventura et al 2021). As expected, we also found asymmetries in racial hostility, with derogation against Blacks as a group far more prevalent than derogation against whites.…”

“…DeKoster and Houtman (2008) note how these online communities construct racist attitudes and social action. More broadly, Ventura and colleagues (2021) identify a high rate of toxic and insulting comments on digital live streams of presidential debates on Facebook news pages. Hmielowski, Hutchens, and Cicchirilo (2014) examine the normative acceptability of aggression in online political message boards, finding that the prevalence of “online flaming” leads users to accept heightened aggression.…”

The Distorting Prism of Social Media: How Self-Selection and Exposure to Incivility Fuel Online Comment Toxicity

“…Prior studies have shown consistently that toxicity exists online (Ventura et al 2021;Chen 2017;Coe et al 2014;Muddiman & Stroud 2017;Sobieraj & Berry 2011;Oz et al 2018;Papacharissi 2004;Theocharis et al 2016). However, the severity of online toxicity/incivility seems to vary considerably across different studies depending on the platform examined, the definition of civility used, and the measurement approach (e.g., Chen 2017;Sobieraj & Berry 2011).…”

“…The Perspective API was found to accurately detect toxicity when compared against human coders' classification of comments on Reddit (Rajadesingan et al 2020), the New York Times (Muddiman et al 2019), and Facebook and Twitter (Hopp et al 2020). The API has been used to detect toxicity on various social media platforms (e.g., Hopp et al 2020;Rajadesingan et al 2020), including Facebook comments in particular (Ventura et al 2021;Hopp et al 2020). This measure serves as the primary dependent variable in our analyses below.…”

“…),Settle et al (2016),Smith (2013),Smith (2014), andWeeks et al (2017), we confirm prior research showing that politically involved partisans are most vocal in online public discourse and offer further evidence that commenters hold more intense opinions and polarized attitudes on a range of subjects.Second, building onVentura et al (2021),Coe et al (2014), Chen (2017),Muddiman & Stroud (2017),Sobieraj & Berry (2011), Oz et al (2018), and Papacharissi (2004, we provide the most systematic evidence…”