Lonely together? Identifying the determinants of collective corrective action against uncivil comments

Abstract

Journalists, scholars, and citizens have raised concerns regarding the high share of incivility in comment sections of news outlets. The current study surveyed members of the social movement #ichbinhier, which aims at collectively countering uncivil comments to cultivate a civil discussion atmosphere in comment sections. We root the activities of #ichbinhier as corrective action and identify the determinants of the members’ engagement by integrating research on bystander behavior and collective action. The findings of our survey show that factors pertaining to individual skills, perceived responsibility, and expected benefits relate to the members’ likelihood to engage against uncivil online comments. Regarding factors derived from collective action research, group efficacy and knowledge of the rules and structures of the movement account for higher levels of engagement. These results shed light on the factors that motivate and inhibit #ichbinhier members—and, potentially, Facebook users in general—to engage against uncivil comments.

Understanding the Bystander Audience in Online Incivility Encounters: Conceptual Issues and Future Research Questions

“…This suggests that the particularities of uncivil user comments may not fundamentally alter the moral and psychological mechanisms underlying bystander intervention [34]. Indeed, the situational factors known to lead bystanders to remain passive (e.g., less perceived severity of the incident, presence of others) have proven to be determinants of intervention in the context of user comments [32,35]. This is because a situation where one encounters online incivility shares some key characteristics with a traditional emergency situation, defined by [36].…”

“…Another possible approach is to explore bystander intervention beyond just individuals' actions and instead view it as a collective corrective action (i.e., social and political actions undertaken by bottom-up groups who pursue a constructive public sphere by counterbalancing negative influences of harmful media content) [65]. This was attempted in the investigation of the #ichbinhier movement, which was an organized form of discursive actions that occurred on Facebook to improve civility in user comments [35]. The determinants of engagement in this movement included not only individual-level motivators (e.g., self-efficacy, personal responsibility) but also group-level motivators (e.g., group efficacy, collective benefits), suggesting the possible interplay between the individual and group for intervention.…”

Who is responsible for interventions against problematic comments? Comparing user attitudes in Germany and the United States

“…Lastly, users can intervene against content perceived as problematic. Volunteer moderation by users exists in various spaces, and researchers have referred to it as a form of civic labor in the digital space (Matias, 2019), online civic intervention (Porten-Chée et al, 2020), or a specific type of corrective action (Lim, 2017;Naab et al, 2019;Ziegele et al, 2019). Most social media platforms, including Facebook, provide the opportunity to flag the content of others that potentially violates the commenting policy of the discussion provider.…”

“…Among other dimensions, they find that platforms rarely encourage counterspeech explicitly. Perhaps the most prominent example of counterspeech-when it occurs-is the social online movement #ichbinhier (i.e., #iamhere; Ziegele et al, 2019). The Facebook group, a spin-off of the Swedish group #jagärhär, was founded in 2016 and currently has more than 45,000 members.…”

Populismus auf Facebook

“…Ob und inwieweit der Einsatz solcher Tools die Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Untersuchung beeinflusst hat, muss ob des gewählten Designs hier unbeantwortet bleiben. Selbiges gilt für den Einfluss von Netzaktivismus (Ziegele et al 2020) und individueller Nutzereigenschaften (Ferrucci et al 2020).…”