All atwitter about climate change: do civil and informative Twitter debates influence support for climate policy?

Abstract

This online experiment examined how participants (1,831 Twitter users in the U.S.) would perceive a conversation on Twitter between two politicians, a Democrat and a Republican, as they debate the merits of a climate policy. We manipulated whether politicians were civil versus uncivil, and uninformative versus informative, in their tweets. Neither the civility nor informativeness of tweets impacted participants’ support for climate policy. However, participants reported learning more, viewed politicians more favorably, and generally viewed arguments as stronger, when politicians were civil. Higher informativeness increased perceived learning, and in some cases, also increased perceived strength of the politicians’ arguments. These effects did not differ by the political orientation of the participant.