Trends in incivility and intolerance: An analysis of political Facebook comments during the 2016 election

Yacubov, Hanna; Rossini, Patrícia

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/106589 Copy

Description

Title

Trends in incivility and intolerance: An analysis of political Facebook comments during the 2016 election

Author(s)

• Yacubov, Hanna
• Rossini, Patrícia

Issue Date

2020-03-23

Keyword(s)

• Incivility
• Public discourse
• Political campaigns

Abstract

"This study focuses on incivility ""below the line"" in the context of the U.S. Presidential elections by investigating qualitative trends in uncivil and intolerant public comments left on Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's Facebook profiles. We leverage a sample of 1,501 Facebook comments that were previously categorized as uncivil or intolerant and conduct a qualitative discourse analysis to identify patterns in these types of expressions to provide a better understanding of the rhetorical or argumentative roles of incivility, as well as to examine the targets of this type of discourse. Notably, intolerant discourse occurs much less frequently than incivility, and the latter is routinely directed at the candidates and used to express reasoned opinions. We also find that the public adopts insults similar to those used by the campaigns, both when posting uncivil comments and when making intolerant threats, such as ""grab her by the pussy"". Taken together, these findings suggest that public comments on candidates' Facebook profiles often adopt a critical stance towards politicians and their positions, and that negative campaign rhetoric appears to have an influence on how people express incivility."

Publisher

iSchools

Series/Report Name or Number

iConference 2020 Proceedings

Type of Resource

text

Language

eng

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106589

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2020 Hanna Yacubov and Patrícia Rossini

Owning Collections