Defending your own or trolling the haters? A configurational approach to incivility in online communities

Abstract

This study explores the emergence of incivility in online communities, challenging the traditional perspective that attributes incivility to individual elements of sociotechnical systems. We argue that this narrow focus fails to recognize the complex interactions between these elements, leading to a rudimentary understanding of how incivility originates and evolves. To address this gap, our research employs fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), examining approximately 4.3 million posts from 100 diverse online communities on Reddit. Through this analysis, we identified five distinct paths that converged into two primary community configurations: close-knit and scattered communities. Each configuration exhibits unique affordances whose activation fosters incivility in different ways. Based on these findings, we expand the understanding of incivility to include subtle, indirect behaviors beyond overt forms such as trolling or hate speech and show how the interplay of multiple community elements produces affordances, avoiding the narrow view of individual affordances and shedding light on variations of social systems. Finally, we demonstrate that within the same digital platform, different social systems can impact user behaviors, including incivility.