316
Views
2
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

Assessing the Prevalence and Predictors of Incivility in Online News Comments Across Six Countries

ORCID Icon, ORCID Icon, , , , & show all
Pages 224-241 | Received 06 Mar 2023, Accepted 04 Aug 2023, Published online: 16 Aug 2023

References

  • Aiolfi, T. 2022. “Populism as a Transgressive Style.” Global Studies Quarterly 2: 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksac006.
  • Anderson, A. A., D. Brossard, D. A. Scheufele, M. A. Xenos, and P. Ladwig. 2014. “The “Nasty Effect:” Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19 (3): 373–387. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12009.
  • Azevedo, F. 2006. “Mídia e Democracia no Brasil: Relações Entre o Sistema de Mídia e o Sistema Político.” Opinião Pública 12 (1): 88–113. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-62762006000100004.
  • Barfar, A. 2019. “Cognitive and Affective Responses to Political Disinformation in Facebook.” Computer in Human Behaviour 101: 173–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.07.026.
  • Bender, E. M., T. Gebru, A. McMillan-Major, and S. Shmitchell. 2021. “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ‘21), 610–623. New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery. ACM Digital Library. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922.
  • Bennett, W. L., and B. Pfetsch. 2018. “Rethinking Political Communication in a Time of Disrupted Public Spheres.” Journal of Communication 68: 243–253. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqx017.
  • Berry, J. M., and S. Sobieraj. 2014. The Outrage Industry Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Blassnig, S., S. Engesser, N. Ernst, and F. Esser. 2019. “Hitting a Nerve: Populist News Articles Lead to More Frequent and More Populist Reader Comments.” Political Communication 36 (4): 629–651. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1637980.
  • Chadwick, A. 2019. The new crisis of public communication: Challenges and opportunities for future research on digital media and politics. https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/online-civic-culture-centre/news-events/articles/o3c-2-crisis/.
  • Coe, K., K. Kenski, and S. A. Rains. 2014. “Online and Uncivil? Patterns and Determinants of Incivility in Newspaper Website Comments.” Journal of Communication 64 (2014): 658–679. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12104.
  • Conlin, L., and C. Roberts. 2016. “Presence of Online Reader Comments Lowers News Site Credibility.” Newspaper Research Journal 37 (4): 365–376. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739532916677056.
  • Costello, M., and J. Hawdon. 2018. “Who Are the Online Extremists Among Us? Sociodemographic Characteristics, Social Networking, and Online Experiences of Those Who Produce Online Hate Materials.” Violence and Gender 5 (1): 55–60. https://doi.org/10.1089/vio.2017.0048.
  • Delle Carpini, M. X., F. L. Cook, and L. R. Jacobs. 2004. “Public Deliberation, Discursive Participation, and Citizen Engagement.” Annual Review of Political Science 7: 315–344. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.7.121003.091630.
  • Fawzi, N. 2019. “Untrustworthy News and the Media as “Enemy of the People?” How a Populist Worldview Shapes Recipients’ Attitudes Toward the Media.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 24 (2): 146–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161218811981.
  • Friess, D., M. Ziegele, and D. Heinbach. 2021. “Collective Civic Moderation for Deliberation? Exploring the Links Between Citizens’ Organized Engagement in Comment Sections and the Deliberative Quality of Online Discussions.” Political Communication 38 (5): 624–646. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1830322.
  • Frimer, J. A., and L. J. Skitka. 2018. “The Montagu Principle: Incivility Decreases Politicians’ Public Approval, Even with Their Political Base.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 115 (5): 845–866. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000140.
  • Gervais, B. T. 2014. “Following the News? Reception of Uncivil Partisan Media and the Use of Incivility in Political Expression.” Political Communication 31: 564–583. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2013.852640.
  • Gervais, B. T. 2015. “Incivility Online: Affective and Behavioral Reactions to Uncivil Political Posts in a Web-based Experiment.” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 12 (2): 167–185. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2014.997416.
  • Gil de Zúñiga, H. 2017. “Los Atributos de la Discusión Política Interpersonal Como Antecedentes de la Elaboración Cognitiva / Attributes of Interpersonal Political Discussion as Antecedents of Cognitive Elaboration.” Reis: Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 65–83. https://doi.org/10.5477/cis/reis.15765.
  • Gil de Zuniga, H., M. Barnidge, and T. Diehl. 2018. “Political Persuasion on Social Media: A Moderated Moderation Model of Political Discussion Disagreement and Civil Reasoning.” The Information Society 34 (5): 302–315. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2018.1497743.
  • Goovaerts, I., and S. Marien. 2020. “Uncivil Communication and Simplistic Argumentation. Decreasing Political Trust, Increasing Persuasive Power?” Political Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1753868.
  • Goyanes, M., P. Borah, and H. Gil de Zúñiga. 2021. “Social Media Filtering and Democracy: Effects of Social Media News use and Uncivil Political Discussions on Social Media Unfriending.” Computers in Human Behavior 120: 106759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106759.
  • Graham, T., and S. Wright. 2015. “‘’A Tale of Two Stories from “Below the Line”: Comment Fields at the Guardian.” International Journal of Press/Politics 20 (3): 317–338. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161215581926.
  • Hahl, O., M. Kim, and E. W. Zuckerman Sivan. 2018. “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy.” American Sociological Review 83 (1): 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122417749632.
  • Hallin, D. C., and P. Mancini. 2004. Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Hallin, D. C., and S. Papathanassopoulos. 2002. “Political Clientelism and the Media: Southern Europe and Latin America in Comparative Perspective.” Media, Culture and Society 24 (2): 175–195. https://doi.org/10.1177/016344370202400202.
  • Halpern, D., and J. Gibbs. 2013. “Social Media as a Catalyst for Online Deliberation? Exploring the Affordances of Facebook and YouTube for Political Expression.” Computers in Human Behavior 29 (3): 1159–1168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.10.008.
  • Hameleers, M. 2019. “The Populism of Online Communities: Constructing the Boundary Between “Blameless” People and “Culpable” Others.” Communication, Culture and Critique 12: 147–165. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcz009.
  • Hanzelka, J., and I. Schmidt. 2017. “Dynamics of Cyber Hate in Social Media: A Comparative Analysis of Anti-Muslim Movements in the Czech Republic and Germany.” International Journal of Cyber Criminology 11 (1): 143–160. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.495778.
  • Herbst, S. 2010. Rude Democracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
  • Herrero-Izquierdo, J., I. Reguero-Sanz, P. Berdón-Prieto, and V. M. Jiménez. 2022. “La Estrategia del Odio: Polarización y Enfrentamiento Partidista en Twitter Durante las Elecciones a la Asamblea de Madrid de 2021 [The Strategy of Hate: Polarization and Partisan Confrontation on Twitter During the 2021 Madrid Regional Elections].” Prisma Social 39: 183–212.
  • Holt, K. 2020. “Populism and Alternative Media.” In Perspectives on Populism and the Media: Avenues for Research, edited by B. Krämer and C. Holtz-Bacha, 201–214. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
  • Hughey, M. W., and J. Daniels. 2013. “Racist Comments at Online News Sites: A Methodological Dilemma for Discourse Analysis.” Media, Culture & Society 35 (3): 332–347. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443712472089.
  • Inguanzo, I., B. Zhang, and H. Gil de Zúñiga. 2021. “Online Cultural Backlash? Sexism and Political User-Generated Content.” Information, Communication & Society 24 (14): 2133–2152. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1962940.
  • Jagers, J., and S. Walgrave. 2007. “Populism as Political Communication Style: An Empirical Study of Political Parties’ Discourse in Belgium.” European Journal of Political Research 46: 319–345. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2006.00690.x.
  • Kenski, K., K. Coe, and S. A. Rains. 2019. “Perception of Incivility in Public Discourse.” In A Crisis of Civility? Political Discourse and its Discontents, edited by R. G. Boatright, T. J. Shaffer, S. Sobieraj, and D. Goldthwaite Young, 45–60. New York: Routledge.
  • Koulouris, T. 2018. “Online Misogyny and the Alternative Right: Debating the Undebatable.” Feminist Media Studies 18 (4): 750–761. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447428.
  • Lee, E.-J. 2012. “That’s not the way it is: How User-Generated Comments on the News Affect Perceived Media Bias.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 18 (1): 32–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01597.x.
  • Manosevitch, E., and D. Walker. 2009. Reader Comments to Online Opinion Journalism: A Space of Public Deliberation. 10th International Symposium on Online Journalism, Austin, TX.
  • Marien, S., I. Goovaerts, and S. Elstub. 2020. “Deliberative Qualities in Televised Election Debates: The Influence of the Electoral System and Populism.” West European Politics 43: 1262–1284. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2019.1651139.
  • Markham, A., and E. Buchanan. 2012. Recommendations for the AoIR Ethics Working Committee (Version 2.0). Association of Internet Researchers. https://aoir.org/reports/ethics2.pdf.
  • Masullo, G., O. Tenenboim, and S. Lu. 2021. “Toxic Atmosphere Effect”: Uncivil Online Comments cue Negative Audience Perceptions of News Outlet Credibility.” Journalism, 24 (1): 101–119. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211064001.
  • Masullo Chen, G. 2017. Nasty Talk. Cham: MacMillan Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56273-5.
  • Masullo Chen, G., A. Muddiman, T. Wilner, E. Pariser, and N. Jomini Stroud. 2019. “We Should Not Get Rid of Online Incivility.” Social Media + Society5 (3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119862641.
  • McMenamin, I., M. Courtney, M. Breen, and G. McNulty. 2021. “The Dependence of Election Coverage on Political Instititutions: Political Competition and Policy Framing in Germany and the United Kingdom.” Journalism, 24 (6): 1281–1300. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211060700.
  • Miller, M. L., and C. Vaccari. 2020. “Digital Threats to Democracy: Comparative Lessons and Possible Remedies.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 25(3): 333–356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220922323.
  • Moffitt, B. 2016. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Moffitt, B., and S. Tormey. 2014. “Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style.” Political Studies 62: 381–397. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9248.12032.
  • Mudde, C., and C. R. Kaltwasser. 2012. “Populism and (Liberal) Democracy: A Framework for Analysis.” In Populism in Europe and the Americas. Threat or Corrective for Democracy?, edited by C. Mudde and C. R. Kaltwasser, 1–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Muddiman, A. 2017. “Personal and Public Levels of Political Incivility.” International Journal of Communication 11: 3182–3202.
  • Mutz, D. C. 2015. In-your-face Politics: The Consequences of Uncivil Media. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Newman, N., R. Fletcher, C. T. Robertson, K. Eddy, and R. Kleis Nielsen. 2022. Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022. Oxford. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022.
  • Núñez-Mussa, E. 2021. “Chile: Crisis of Trust and a Precarious Industry.” In The Media for Democracy Monitor 2021: How Leading News Media Survive Digital Transformation 2, edited by J. Trappel and T. Tomaz, 85–146. Göteborg: Nordicom. https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855428-3.
  • Ottoni, O., E. Cunha, G. Magno, P. Bernardina, W. Meira Jr, and V. Almeida. 2018. “Analyzing Right-Wing YouTube Channels.” Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science May: 323–332. https://doi.org/10.1145/3201064.3201081.
  • Papacharissi, Z. 2004. “Democracy Online: Civility, Politeness and the Democratic Potential of Online Political Discussion Groups.” New Media & Society 5: 259–283. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444804041444.
  • Park, S., C. Fisher, T. Flew, and U. Dulleck. 2020. “Global Mistrust in News: The Impact of Social Media on Trust.” International Journal on Media Management 22 (2): 83–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/14241277.2020.1799794.
  • Peacock, C., J. M. Scacco, and N. Jomini Stroud. 2019. “The Deliberative Influence of Comment Section Structure.” Journalism 20 (6): 752–771. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884917711791.
  • Rossini, P. 2020. “Beyond Incivility: Understanding Patterns of Uncivil and Intolerant Discourse in Online Political Talk.” Communication Research, 49 (3): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650220921314.
  • Rossini, P., J. Stromer-Galley, and F. Zhang. 2021. “Exploring the Relationship Between Campaign Discourse on Facebook and the Public’s Comments: A Case Study of Incivility During the 2016 U.S.” Presidential Election. Political Studies, 69 (1): 89–107. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719890818.
  • Rossini, P., H. Sturm-Wikerson, and T. J. Johnson. 2020. “A Wall of Incivility? Public Discourses and Immigration in the 2016 U.S.” Primaries. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 18 (3): 243–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2020.1858218.
  • Ruiz, C., D. Domingo, J. L. Micó, J. Díaz-Noci, K. Meso, and P. Masip. 2011. “Public Sphere 2.0? The Democratic Qualities of Citizen Debates in Online Newspapers.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 16 (4): 463–487. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161211415849.
  • Salgado, S., J. Stanyer, G. Hajzer, D. N. Hopmann, B. Kalsnes, G. Legnante, and K. B. Sanders. 2019. “Politicians’ Perceptions of Populism and the Media: A Cross-National Study Based on Semi-Structured Interviews.” In Communicating Populism: Comparing Actor Perceptions, Media Coverage, and Effects on Citizens in Europe, edited by C. Reinemann, J. Stanyer, T. Aalberg, F. Esser, and C. de Vreese, 51–68. New York: Routledge.
  • Santana, A. D. 2014. “Virtuous or Vitriolic – The Effects of Anonymity in Online Newspaper Reader Comment Boards.” Journalism Practice 8 (1): 18–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2013.813194.
  • Santana, A. D. 2015. “Incivility Dominates Online Comments on Immigration.” Newspaper Research Journal 36 (19): 92–107. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739532915580317.
  • Santana, A. D., and T. Hopp. 2022. “Seeing red: Reading Uncivil News Comments Guided by Personality Characteristics.” Newspaper Research Journal 43 (2): 196–216. https://doi.org/10.1177/07395329221094662.
  • Schulz, A., W. Wirth, and P. Müller. 2020. “We Are the People and You Are Fake News: A Social Identity Approach to Populist Citizens’ False Consensus and Hostile Media Perceptions.” Communication Research 47 (2): 201–226. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650218794854.
  • Seely, N. 2018. “Virtual Vitriol: A Comparative Analysis of Incivility Within Political News Discussion Forums.” Electronic News 12 (1): 42–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/1931243117739060.
  • Shils, E. 1991. “The Virtue of Civil Society.” Government and Opposition 26 (1): 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.1991.tb01120.x.
  • Shils, E. 1997. The Virtue of Civility: Selected Essays on Liberalism, Tradition and Civil Society. Carmel: Liberty Fund.
  • Shirikov, A. December 23, 2020. Is Trust in Media Declining? Evidence from the World Values Survey. https://ssrn.com/abstract = 3754404.
  • Springer, N., I. Engelmann, and C. Pfaffinger. 2015. “User Comments: Motives and Inhibitors to Write and Read.” Information, Communication & Society 18: 798–815. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2014.997268.
  • Striker, R., B. A. Conway, and J. T. Danielson. 2016. “What is political incivility?.” Communication Monographs 83 (4): 535–556.
  • Stroud, N. J., E. van Duyn, and C. Peacock. 2016. News Comments and News Comment Readers. https://mediaengagement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ENPNews-Commenters-and-Comment-Readers1.pdf.
  • Su, L. Y., M. A. Xenos, K. M. Rose, C. Wirz, D. A. Scheufele, and D. Brossard. 2018. “Uncivil and Personal? Comparing Patterns of Incivility on the Facebook Pages of News Outlets.” New Media & Society 20 (10): 3678–3699. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818757205.
  • Taggart, P. 2000. Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press.
  • Thiele, D., and T. Turnšek. 2022. “How Right-Wing Populist Comments Affect Online Deliberation on News Media Facebook Pages.” Media and Communication 10 (4): 141–154. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v10i4.5690.
  • van Aelst, P., and K. de Swert. 2009. “Politics in the News: Do Campaigns Matter? A Comparison of Political News During Election Periods and Routine Periods in Flanders (Belgium).” COMM 34 (2): 149–168. https://doi.org/10.1515/COMM.2009.011.
  • Waddell, T. F. 2018. “What Does the Crowd Think? How Online Comments and Popularity Metrics Affect News Credibility and Issue Importance.” New Media & Society 20 (8): 3068–3083. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817742905.
  • Walgrave, S., and K. de Swert. 2007. “Where Does Issue Ownership Come from? From the Party or from the Media? Issue-Party Identifications in Belgium, 1991-2005.” International Journal of Press/Politics 12 (1): 37–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/1081180X06297572.
  • Ylä-Anttila, T. 2018. “Populist Knowledge: ‘Post-truth’ Repertoires of Contesting Epistemic Authorities.” European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 5 (4): 356–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/23254823.2017.1414620.
  • Zannettou, S., B. Bradlyn, E. De Cristofaro, H. Kwak, M. Sirivianos, G. Stringhini, and J. Blackburn. 2018. “What is Gab? A Bastion of Free Speech or an Alt-Right Echo Chamber?” WWW ‘18: Companion Proceedings of the The Web Conference 2018, 1007–1014. https://doi.org/10.1145/3184558.3191531.
  • Zhang, B., I. Inguanzo, and H. G. de Zúñiga. 2022. “Examining the Role of Online Uncivil Discussion and Ideological Extremity on Illegal Protest.” Media and Communication 10 (4): 94–104. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v10i4.5694.
  • Ziegele, M., O. Quiring, K. Esau, and D. Friess. 2020. “Linking News Value Theory With Online Deliberation: How News Factors and Illustration Factors in News Articles Affect the Deliberative Quality of User Discussions in SNS’ Comment Sections.” Communication Research 47 (6): 860–890. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650218797884.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.