Civility 2.0: A comparative analysis of incivility in online political discussion

Online political discussion amongst citizens has often been labelled uncivil. Indeed, as online discussion allows participants to remain relatively anonymous, and by extension, unaccountable for their behaviour, citizens often engage in angry, hostile, and derogatory discussion, taking the opportunity to attack the beliefs and values of others without fear of retribution. Some commentators believe that this type of incivility, however, could soon be a thing of the past as citizens increasingly turn to online social network sites such as Facebook.com to discuss politics. Facebook requires users, when registering for an account, to do so using their real name, and encourages them to attach a photograph and other personal details to their profile. As a result, users are both identified with and accountable for the comments they make, presumably making them less likely to engage in uncivil discussion. This paper aims to test this assumption by analysing the occurrence of incivility in reader comments left in response to political news articles by the Washington Post. Specifically, it will quantitatively content analyse the comments, comparing the occurrence of incivility evident in comments left on the Washington Post website with comments left on the Washington Post’s Facebook page. Analysis suggests that, in line with the hypothesis, these online platforms differ significantly when it comes to incivility. Paper to be presented at the Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties (EPOP) Conference, September 13-15, 2013, University of Lancaster, UK. Acknowledgement: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/I902767/1].