Incivility in Online Discussion: An Examination of Impolite and Intolerant Comments

Abstract

Incivility in online political discussion represents one of the most widely debated issues among scholars. Much research focuses on the incivility disseminated by political elites on social media, paying less attention to the user incivility that spreads as a “bottom-up” reaction to politicians’ posts. To fill this gap, the article focuses on user comments on the Facebook pages of parliamentary candidates in the run-up to the Italian general election of 2018. Distinguishing between intolerant and impolite comments, we observed that the extent of the former in user discussions is limited, and linked to highly sensitive issues and radical right-wing populist communities. This would seem to counter the view that all political debate on social media is inherently toxic and harmful to democratic and deliberative processes. Impoliteness, on the contrary, is adopted by users to express mutual hostility and seems particularly based on feelings of partisanship, so that the issues disappear completely from the discussion and forms of participation “against the other” are activated.