Incivility Is Rising Among American Politicians on Twitter

We provide the first systematic investigation of trends in incivility American politicians on Twitter, a dominant platform for political communication United States. Applying validated artificial intelligence classifier to all 1.3 million tweets made by members Congress since 2009, we observe 23% increase over decade Twitter. Further analyses suggest that rise was partly driven reinforcement learning which engaged greater following positive feedback. Uncivil tended receive more approval and attention, publicly indexed large quantities “likes” “retweets” platform. Mediational longitudinal show this feedback uncivil tweets, were thereafter. conclude discussing how structure social media platforms might facilitate incivility-reinforcing dynamic between their followers.