Searching for the Dimensions of Today’s Political Incivility

Abstract

Incivility in public discourse is a central concern for scholars and citizens alike. However, the definitions of the concept offered by scholars are dissimilar and difficult to compare. This research, which adopts an approach based on citizens’ perceptions of incivility, addresses this issue by empirically testing a three-dimensional model of political incivility. The findings of a survey of 797 students to track differences in perceptions of specific types of uncivil speech show that political incivility consists of a three-dimensional concept, that is, incivility as “impoliteness,” as “individual delegitimization,” and as “institutional delegitimization.” Future studies can use this model to corroborate these results and verify whether this composition of the concept holds up in other contexts.

Evaluations and Perceptions of political incivility

“…It should also be noted that these results are also consistent with the findings on citizens' reactions to incivility, which similarly showed that forms of rudeness such as name-calling elicit more reactions and sanctioning activities than forms of non-respect for democratic life (Kalch & Naab, 2017). While in all the examples mentioned the context considered is the US, recent surveys conducted in Europe suggest quite different results (see Bormann, 2022;Bentivegna & Rega, 2022a). Concerning the Italian context, we believe that the spread of a populist communicative stylefirst with the Lega party and then with that of the Five Star Movementmay have influenced the perception of discursive incivilityboth on the side of language and discursive interactionsto the point of leading to its normalisation.…”

“…We prefer to develop our reflection about incivility from the observation of its multidimensional nature that encompasses references to both the individual and collective spheres. Hence our proposal to define incivility as a lack of respect for the social and cultural norms that govern personal interactions as much as those that govern the functioning of democratic systems (Bentivegna & Rega, 2022a). And it is precisely this second core of meanings, linked to the role of (in)civility in the functioning of democratic life, that in our view takes on particular relevance today and makes the study of this phenomenon even more important.…”

“…With our research, we wanted to contribute to filling this gap by empirically investigating citizens' evaluation of the incivility of political actors. Starting from the recognition of the multidimensional articulation of the concept and from the evidence in the literature about the fact that the level of incivility perceived by people changes in conjunction with different types of incivility (Bentivegna & Rega, 2022a;Muddiman, 2017;Stryker et al, 2016), we formulated our first hypothesis which argues that not all dimensions of political incivility are perceived in the same way. This diversification allows for a more precise attribution of contextual relevance.…”

“…That is, since Stryker and his colleagues (2016) defined incivility as a three-dimensional construct (Utterance Incivility, Discursive Incivility, and Deception Incivility) and Muddiman (2017) introduced the distinction between personal and public incivility. Since then, the multidimensionality of the concept has been a shared heritage among scholars (Bentivegna & Rega, 2022a;Bormann, 2022;Hopp, 2019;Muddiman, 2019Muddiman, , 2021Stryker et al, 2016). The articulation of the concept into different dimensions that refer to different "types" of incivility not only helps us clear the field of ambiguities and opaque interpretations but, at the same time, allows to shed light on the variables that most influence citizens' perceptions.…”

“…Aim of this paper is to identify the predictors of political impoliteness, starting from an extremely simple articulation of the concept that can be easily translated into operational terms, as shown in the second paragraph. On the basis of literature that considers not only the most traditional dimension of impoliteness, but also those dimensions that represent a threat to the "collective face"understood both as the set of institutional actors and as functioning mechanisms (Bentivegna & Rega, 2022a)we have identified these types of incivility: discursive incivility, vulgar incivility, informational incivility, violent incivility and discriminatory incivility, which together combine to constitute political incivility in a multidimensional sense. In the empirical work presented here, we first recorded the respondents' perceptions of different types of incivility to understand which were perceived as most problematic; secondly, we identified predictors of perception through the application of regression models.…”