Political discourse on social media is infamously uncivil. Prevailing explanations argue that such incivility is driven by differences in ideological or social-identity conflict—partisans are uncivil because the political stakes are so high. This report considers a different (albeit not contradictory) possibility—that online political discourse tends to be uncivil because the people who opt into such discourse are generally uncivil. Indeed, people who opt into political discourse tend to be especially toxic, even when discussing nonpolitical topics in nonpartisan contexts. Such individuals disproportionately dominate political discourse online, thereby undermining the public sphere as a venue for inclusive debate.
Abstract
Prevailing theories of partisan incivility on social media suggest that it derives from disagreement about political issues or from status competition between groups. This study—which analyzes the commenting behavior of Reddit users across diverse cultural contexts (subreddits)—tests the alternative hypothesis that such incivility derives in large part from a selection effect: Toxic people are especially likely to opt into discourse in partisan contexts. First, we examined commenting behavior across over 9,000 unique cultural contexts (subreddits) and confirmed that discourse is indeed more toxic in partisan (e.g. r/progressive, r/conservatives) than in nonpartisan contexts (e.g. r/movies, r/programming). Next, we analyzed hundreds of millions of comments from over 6.3 million users and found robust evidence that: (i) the discourse of people whose behavior is especially toxic in partisan contexts is also especially toxic in nonpartisan contexts (i.e. people are not politics-only toxicity specialists); and (ii) when considering only nonpartisan contexts, the discourse of people who also comment in partisan contexts is more toxic than the discourse of people who do not. These effects were not driven by socialization processes whereby people overgeneralized toxic behavioral norms they had learned in partisan contexts. In contrast to speculation about the need for partisans to engage beyond their echo chambers, toxicity in nonpartisan contexts was higher among people who also comment in both left-wing and right-wing contexts (bilaterally engaged users) than among people who also comment in only left-wing or right-wing contexts (unilaterally engaged users). The discussion considers implications for democratic functioning and theories of polarization. (...)
Discussion
Taken together, the results provide strong and consistent support for the troll hypothesis: (i) people who are especially toxic in partisan contexts are also especially toxic in nonpartisan contexts, and (ii) engaged partisans (especially the bilaterally engaged) are more toxic than the nonengaged when discussing nonpolitical content in nonpartisan contexts. Such effects are specific to uncivil behaviors (rather than to negativity in general) and do not result from some sort of socialization process in partisan subreddits. They emerge regardless of political lean, and they apply to users whose partisan comments take place in contexts that are explicitly political or ostensibly nonpolitical—although they are especially strong for users with activity in explicitly political contexts. The effects, which emerge in virtually all nonpartisan subreddits, help to explain why political contexts tend to be more toxic than nonpolitical contexts. We conclude that just as people tend to be consistent in their online and offline political behavior, they are also consistent in their political and nonpolitical behavior.
Future research will be required to test how strongly these results generalize beyond Reddit. That said, a strength of the present study is that it investigates hundreds of millions of unique behaviors from millions of people across thousands of cultural contexts (subreddits). As such, the results are not subject to the typical concerns about a limited range of cultures or topics of discourse. In addition, social-media environments (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit) have become a core nexus for political discourse, increasingly functioning as democracy's public square. Reddit is a major context where political ideas get introduced and debated—where people of diverse backgrounds and ideologies discuss and argue about which ideas and policies are best.
The present findings have important implications for theories of political polarization. They suggest that discourse in partisan contexts is uncivil in large part because the people who opt into it are uncivil. This incivility distorts the public square. People's reluctance to contribute to political discourse—to contribute their views to the marketplace of ideas—is driven less by substantive disagreement than by the tenor of the discourse; they opt out when discourse gets heated. It is no wonder that people who are lower in trait hostility tend to opt out of online political discourse. The overrepresentation of dispositionally uncivil people in our political discourse is especially troubling because it promotes combative partisanship at the expense of deliberation and leads observers (those who also participate and those who do not) to conclude that the state of our politics is far more toxic than it really is.
There is little reason to believe that dispositionally uncivil people have better political ideas than those who are more dispositionally civil, and there is good reason to believe that the uncivil are less prone to compromise, to seek win–win solutions, or to assume that their interlocutors are people of goodwill. Consequently, the disproportionate representation of uncivil people in partisan contexts may be a significant contributor to the democratic backsliding afflicting the United States and many other nations in recent years. Theories of polarization must engage seriously with the fact that society has built a new megaphone that amplifies the voices of people whose discourse tendencies are disproportionally characterized by toxicity, moral outrage, profanity, anger, impoliteness, and low prosociality.
Past research has demonstrated that passive exposure to social-media posts from opposing partisans can exacerbate polarization, but the present study is the first to test whether people who opt into partisan discourse on one vs. both sides of the political divide tend to be especially toxic. Reddit offers its users the opportunity to join multiple communities across the political spectrum, and it gives space for constructive conversations on controversial topics. Nevertheless, our results suggest that this opportunity is exploited by people with especially uncivil tendencies. These findings contribute to an emerging sense of skepticism about whether breaking down echo chambers will reduce polarization or toxicity—at least in a straightforward way. The use of observational data allowed us to identify selection effects related to the behavior of the engaged, but further research is required to establish causal effects. (...)
Democracy requires conflict. People with differing ideological and policy preferences must compete in the marketplace of political ideas, seeking to persuade others that their own ideas are best. The present research suggests, however, that the voices that are most amplified on social media are dispositionally toxic, an arrangement that seems unlikely to cultivate the sort of constructive discussion and debate that democracies require. The incivility that the engaged partisans exhibit in contexts that are irrelevant to politics raises the concern that toxic behavior in partisan contexts might masquerade as righteousness or advocacy, but it is actually due in large part to these specific people's tendency to be uncivil in general. Consequently, an urgent priority for societies riven by polarization and democratic backsliding is to develop a means of making the public square a congenial environment not only for the dispositionally uncivil but also for people who would be willing to enter the debate if only the tenor of the discourse were less toxic.
by Michalis Mamakos, Eli J. Finkel, PNAS/National Academy of Sciences | Read more:
[ed. Wherever they are, toxic people will always be toxic. I think we knew this.]
