Does Civility Matter in the Blogosphere? Examining the

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Discussion

Responding to recent concern about incivility in the blogosphere, the current study attempts to find connections between blogger tone, reader ideology and attitudes toward political disagreement. Our findings generally support scholars’ concerns about detrimental effects of incivility especially when bloggers attacked the views consistent with the participants’. Among individuals who were exposed to like-minded blogger’s commentary, uncivil attack did not affect negative emotional reactions to the message and their open-mindedness. However, among individuals who were exposed to the unlike-minded blogger’s commentary, there were no significant differences in negative emotions and open-mindedness. In addition, the findings show that uncivil attack produced a backlash or boomerang effects such that it reinforced certainty of unlike-minded participants’ prior issue attitude and at the same time weakened certainty of likeminded participations’ prior attitude.

The findings also showed that unlike-minded blogger’s uncivil attack decreased willingness to talk with the other side, while like-minded blogger’s uncivil attack increased willingness to talk with the other side. These findings seem to be consistent with findings from prior research on disconfirmation bias (Edwards & Smith, 1996) and the counter-attitudinal message effects on defensive reactions (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). Further, the findings from the study provide some empirical evidence supporting the role of negative emotions in mediating joint effects of incivility and incongruence on reader’s attitudes. Negative emotions were found to fully mediate the interaction effects on open-mindedness and partially mediate the interaction effects on attitude certainty and willingness to talk with the other side.

Our findings suggest that effects of exposure to disagreement may be contingent upon the way of communicators’ expressing disagreement, as Mendelberg and Oleske (2000) pointed out, “the positive effects of deliberation rest on the ability of the opposing sides to communicate about their disagreement” (p. 186). That is, the beneficial effects of exposure to disagreement in political discourse are not solely dependent on the content of disagreement, but also on the way of communicating disagreement. In this sense, incivility in expression of disagreement in political blogs may have detrimental effects on readers’ mind such as negative evaluations of arguments (Holtgraves, 1997), hostile perception (Jessmer & Anderson, 2001), and negative expectation of deliberative process (Mutz & Reeves, 2005).

Two particularly noteworthy aspects about these findings are the role of like-minded communication and incivility in the polarization process. Our findings suggest the possibility that polarization comes not just from people congregating in like-minded groups, but also from the lack of civility. Nasty language and name-calling tend to discourage people from sorting themselves into heterogeneous groups, partly because nasty language is off-putting and partly because people who expect to receive nasty attacks want a group of like-minded folks who will back them up when that happens. It appears that counter-attitudinal messages create a negative evaluation of the other side especially when message tone is uncivil. Our findings seem to be consistent with findings from prior research on disconfirmation bias (Edwards & Smith, 1996) and the counter-attitudinal message effects on defensive reactions (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999).

Second, the manner of communicating disagreement appears to produce significant effects on message receivers’ attitudes toward political disagreement, especially when individuals were exposed to a counter-attitudinal message. Given that uncivil manners are perceived to violate norms of courtesy and reciprocity in resolving social confliction (Funk, 2001), uncivil expression from an opposing speaker could eventually initiate acrimonious public debate and worsen deeper confrontation (Mansbridge, 1983), and thus have detrimental effects on the democratic potential of such communication.

These results also have implications for broader theories of the role of discussion in democracy. Hostile attitudes toward the other side of an issue may lead people with strong attitudes to avoid future discussions with the other side. This is precisely the opposite of the “virtuous circle” of discussion, mutual understanding, and engagement discussed above. Future research should explore other aspects of message characteristics that might reduce or eliminate this hostile response, and should also directly test willingness to discuss politics with people on the other side in the future as a dependent variable.

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Limitations

This study operates under several important limitations. First, our measurement of negative emotional reaction, constructed with a series of dichotomous variables, does not allow us to pinpoint exactly where effects on emotion are occurring. Although incongruence has an impact on negative emotion generally, each distinct emotional response may occur somewhat differently than the others, which a more precise measure might be able to reveal. Additionally, there may be some emotional response that is affected by exposure to a congruent uncivil message, which is not to be found in the emotions we chose to measure. Future research that examines reactions to congruent messages specifically should use emotional constructs more suited to the congruent context.

Second, our model does not address the potential beneficial effects of exposure to uncivil, unlike-minded messages. Some research has shown that the tendency to be open to other points of view may be in conflict with the tendency to engage and participate in the political process (Mutz, 2006). Although we note some of the negative impacts of incivility in a heterogeneous political discussion, it is possible and perhaps likely that some democratically desirable outcomes occur as well.

Finally, our study makes use of an undergraduate student sample and has all the limitations that come with it. Our subjects live in a liberal, politically engaged city, and many of them are taking courses in journalism, mass communication and political science. Because of this, they may approach our stimulus more critically and with greater availability of relevant knowledge than would the general public. Our results should be seen not as necessarily generalizable to the entire population, but as a first step toward examining one of the defining phenomena of the blogosphere.

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Implications

Despite these limitations, the findings from this study raise a number of pertinent questions for political bloggers across the ideological spectrum. Perhaps most importantly, they show the potential for boomerang effects of their messages, through which their ideological opponents may become more strongly opposed to them after exposure to uncivil messages. For bloggers who tend to employ an uncivil tone, it may be wise to re-examine the goals of their blogging efforts – if those goals include swaying people from the opposing side of an issue to their side, or even persuade their opponents to listen to what they have to say, civility may be the key.

Indeed, we find that the condition most likely to produce openness to talking with people on the other side of this issue is the one in which subjects viewed a civil but ideologically incongruent message. When presented with an opposing viewpoint that doesn’t attack or ridicule their own beliefs, people are more willing to listen to and engage with that viewpoint, even if they don’t necessarily come to be persuaded by it. They are also more generally open-minded, which may or may not portend a future attitude change, but which certainly allows for the possibility of constructive discussion with the blogger.

For those who view the Internet, and blogs in particular, as a vital new venue for political discussion and deliberation, these findings imply both hazardous and bright potential futures. The uncivil tone that bloggers may use as a tool to rally partisans to a cause or campaign – potentially opening up new avenues of political participation – may have the unintended side effect of cutting off their ideological opponents’ willingness to engage in substantive discussion about matters of disagreement.

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Table 1. Regression analyses for experimental effects on DVs and mediating effects of negative emotion



Note.

Control variables included gender, year of school, ideological extremity, and message structure manipulation (global vs. interspersed).

Cell entries are final regression coefficients.

* p < .05, ** p < .01, * p < .001.

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Figure 1. Interaction pattern between incivility and ideological incongruence influencing on negative emotion



Note.

The interaction pattern was plotted based on estimated marginal means after controlling for the experimental factor of blog message structure, gender, year in college, and ideological extremity.

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Figure 2. Interaction pattern between incivility and ideological incongruence influencing on open-mindedness



Note.
The interaction pattern was plotted based on estimated marginal means after controlling for the experimental factor of blog message structure, gender, year in college, and ideological extremity.

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Figure 3. Interaction pattern between incivility and ideological incongruence influencing on attitude certainty



Note.

The interaction pattern was plotted based on estimated marginal means after controlling for the experimental factor of blog message structure, gender, year in college, and ideological extremity.

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Figure 4. Interaction pattern between incivility and ideological incongruence influencing on willingness to talk with the other side.



Note.

The interaction pattern was plotted based on estimated marginal means after controlling for the experimental factor of blog message structure, gender, year in college, and ideological extremity.

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Appendix 1. News story on global warming

HEADLINE: Lawmakers debate competing proposals on global warming

WASHINGTON - Congress turned the spotlight on global warming this week for the first time in six years, promising to pass legislation to address climate change by year's end.

Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate said there is growing agreement that Congress needs to address the problem of greenhouse gases causing global warming. There is less agreement, however, on how that should be done.

In a recent press conference, Rep. Mark Hunt, D-Colo., touted a plan that calls for mandatory caps on greenhouse emissions for power plants, industry and oil refineries. President Bush has opposed mandatory caps but has called for changes to federal fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles and a boost in ethanol production.

The Hunt plan, co-sponsored by Rep. Bill Reedy, D-Ky. would require releases of heat-trapping gases to return to 2004 levels by 2012 and to 1990 levels by 2020.

Carbon dioxide, produced from the burning of fossil fuels, is the primary greenhouse gas. United States emissions of this gas have increased an average of about 1 percent per year since 1990. "With each passing year, the consequences of federal inaction on reducing greenhouse gas emissions become more devastating for our children and grandchildren, and the range of solutions grows smaller," Hunt said Thursday.

Conservatives such as Rep. Mike Donald, R-Kan., oppose strict limits on emissions, arguing that they would raise energy costs for consumers and hurt economic growth. "Carbon caps will hit hardest on those with the least ability to pay. Do we really want that?" he said.

President Bush, while acknowledging concerns about global warming, maintains that industry can deal with the issue through the development of new technologies.

The president has submitted a plan to combine technological innovations and voluntary efforts by industry to reduce emissions through energy conservation and the use of renewable fuels. These measures, administration officials say, are already well on their way to slowing the growth of greenhouse gases.

The Bush plan falls short of the mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions envisioned by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which President Bush renounced in 2001. "We can get beyond. . .the pre-Kyoto era with a post-Kyoto strategy, the center of which is new technologies," he said on a visit Tuesday to a DuPont facility in Delaware.

Critics have questioned whether President Bush's proposals are the best way to address the problem of global warming.

"When you get to the bottom line, there are no hard caps, no enforcement mechanisms, and we aren't even going to start reversing the increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector for 10 years," Hunt said.

The Bush administration believes that market forces will prove more efficient than government regulation. White House spokesman Tony Snow said, "Carrots work better than sticks."