Evaluations and Perceptions of political incivility

Abstract

Incivility in public discourse has become a central concern. This research develops an approach based on citizens' perceptions of incivility in order to assess predictors of such perceptions. Starting from an articulation of the concept that can be easily translated into operational terms, we identified five types of incivility (discursive, vulgar, informative, violent and discriminatory) that together constitute political incivility in a multidimensional sense. Through a survey of a representative sample of the Italian population, we found that citizens' perception of incivility is not uniform, but varies depending on the context and individual characteristics (socio-demographic variables, news consumption and relationship with politics). On the whole, the importance of disentangling the concept into different types has emerged, because continuing to speak of “incivility” in a broad sense does not help to clarify the nature of the phenomenon nor to identify the consequences reflected on the front of citizens' relationship with politics.

Political reconfiguration in the social space: data analysis and future perspective

“…This has surpassed the journalistic intermediation of traditional channels in terms of agenda-setting power (Mazzoleni and Bracciale, 2019), thanks to the interactivity allowed by digital media. However, there are also inherent limitations associated with their nature and exposure to possible manipulations and simplifications (Bentivegna and Boccia-Artieri, 2019). Particularly, the current political moment linked to the use of digital media in politics must confront an increased level of citizen participation and interaction online, generating effective communication strategies and actions in producing political messages that the public can appropriate, modify, and relay.…”

Disinformation a problem for democracy: profiling and risks of consensus manipulation

“…Zuboff argues that surveillance capitalism has introduced a new logic in which "human experience is subjugated to the market mechanisms of capitalism, and reborn as behavior." (2019, p. 111) This brings us back to the starting point about the vast amount of data from different sources that is used to study users, and that transforms the data, the conversational dimension expression of connected publics (Bentivegna and Boccia Artieri, 2019) into a tool of knowledge. This remains within the dimension of a positivist view of the network society, or is the data becomes an instrument of power capable of controlling individuals, where behavior becomes a commodity, as a direct consequence of the datafication mechanism inherent in platforms that is based on a "commodification mechanism that concerns the transformation, by platforms, of objects, activities, emotions, ideas, online and offline, into marketable goods.…”

Winning against All Odds: Elly Schlein’s Successful Election Campaign and Instagram Communication Strategies

“…It is no coincidence that the same newspaper articles that are reported are systematically reduced to the form of 'title + image', and are able to exhaust the entire news in the space of the image and with little content. Hashtags, on the other hand, are particularly used in the caption to recall their slogan #partedanoi, which has formed around the topic and leitmotif of the moment (Bentivegna and Boccia Artieri 2019), which can be traced back to the election period. What has been seen fully reflects in multimodality, which refers to the ability of texts to use different semiotic modes, such as verbal language, images, sounds, and other visual or audiovisual elements, to communicate meanings.…”