The strategic use of incivility in contemporary politics. The case of the 2018 Italian general election on Facebook

Abstract

The study addresses central issues in contemporary politics in response to growing concern about the impoverishment of political discourse that has become increasingly uncivil. In particular it analhyzes citizens' reactions to leaders' uncivil posts on Facebook during the 2018 Italian General Election, by adopting a theoretical-operational model based on a dual approach (top down -bottom up) that examines the forms of adverse communication used by politicians online, and the consequences of these forms on users' discussion (analyzing both ranking behaviors and users' comments).Political incivility is operationalized as a multidimensional concept and specific types are proposed, starting from violations of norms of politeness (interpersonal-level) and proceeding to violation of public norms of civility (public-level). Results show that leaders' use of uncivil messages trigger greater online participation, thus increasing the visibility of their posts. However, the emotional excitement elicited by these triggering forms of elite communication encourage antagonistic and rude behaviors among users, leading to an increase in uncivil comments and thus jeopardizing the quality of online discussion. Overall, it emerges that incivility combined with divisive issues can be thought of as a tool of communication used strategically by politicians to mobilize voters and to strengthen their political affiliation.

Patterns of Incivility on U.S. Congress Members' Social Media Accounts: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Influence of Platform, Post, and Person Characteristics

“…In fact, the findings also show that politicians can somewhat control users' use of incivility through leading by example. Consistent with prior studies (Gervais, 2017;Kim et al, 2021;Rega and Marchetti, 2021;Shmargad et al, 2021), our estimations provide evidence that using incivil language in the original post increases the probability of said post receiving incivil comments. Effects resulting from personal characteristics of the posting politicians are overall weaker and opposite to the direction we expected based on previous research.…”

“…Indeed, previous studies have found "significant spikes of abuse on particular days" (Ward and McLoughlin, 2020, p. 61; see also Su et al, 2018 for social media pages of news outlets), but also that incivility always seems to be prevalent on social media to a certain degree (Theocharis et al, 2020). As indicated above, research has also shown that incivility in the original post influences the amount of incivility in user comments (Gervais, 2017;Kim et al, 2021;Rega and Marchetti, 2021;Shmargad et al, 2021). This kind of "contagious incivility" has been associated with different mechanisms, with explanations ranging from behavioral mimicry to incivility increasing feelings of anger or changing social media users' perceived social norms (for an overview, see Kim et al, 2021).…”

“…Research into the characteristics of the original post has often focused on variations in topics, suggesting that divisive issues (e.g., abortion) tend to lead to more heated and incivil discussions (Stroud et al, 2015;Rega and Marchetti, 2021). Relatedly, temporal variations in the (in)civility of user comments are to be expected: When a politician posts-for example, in the immediate run-up to an election or after a personal scandalcould thus have implications for the amount of incivil comments (time).…”

“…Although recent research suggests that the politicians themselves will be the main target of incivil comments to their social media posts (Rossini, 2021), our research deliberately focuses on various utterances of incivility, as reflected in the broad definition offered above. This decision is not only informed by methodological considerations related to our approach of automated incivility detection, but most importantly by the fact that incivility has been shown to be "contagious" (e.g., Kim et al, 2021;Rega and Marchetti, 2021). As such, incivility directed toward other users or even the issue addressed in a post might deteriorate the entire discussion, lead to more (targeted) incivility, and is thus likely to have the abovementioned negative consequences for both bystanders and the posting politicians.…”

Evaluations and Perceptions of political incivility

“…The events on Capitol Hill are perhaps the most explicit and recent example of this drift, but equally eloquent are those forms of incivility variously spread at the political level both in the US(Kenski et al, 2018;Pain & Masullo Chen, 2019) and in Europe(Jaki & De Smedt, 2019;Rega & Marchetti, 2021). These range from the dissemination of stereotyping and forms of demonisation of political opponents and other subjects (e.g.…”