The Effects of Mediated Incivility on Political Trust and News Credibility

• In Event: Don't Be Cruel: Incivility in Media and Campaigns

Abstract

Concerns are raised repeatedly about a decline in quality of televised political debate and its subsequent news coverage. One of the main reasons for concern is the strong presence of political incivility in these debates and in post-debate news coverage afterwards. Political debates are generally not spared from uncivil statements and attacks politicians express towards their opponents, and journalists moreover tend to focus on and over-report these uncivil attacks rather than substantively covering the content of the debate (Benoit & Currie, 2001; Muddiman, 2013). These practices have been argued to have harmful effects and spur distrust towards politicians, politics, and the press (Cappella & Jamieson, 1997; Cho et al., 2009, p. 247).

This study investigates how both political trust and news credibility are affected by such an incivility focus in election debates and in post-debate news coverage. It is expected that politics and news media are evaluated less trustworthy and credible after exposure to news coverage that heavily focuses on these uncivil attacks, but, importantly, that this effect will depend on the actual degree of incivility in the debate being covered. In order to test these expectations, a 2 x 2 between-subjects experimental design is developed. Participants are exposed first to a civil or an uncivil fragment of a political election debate, followed by news coverage of that debate, i.e. two versions of a newspaper article: one that focuses on the substantive content of the debate only and one that adds an incivility focus to it. Two survey experiments are conducted in Belgium (N experiment 1 = 465; N experiment 2 = 1100).

Preliminary results (N1 = 465) show that incivility-focused coverage indeed lowers citizens’ level of trust in politics and news media, and that this effect depends on how civil politicians behave in the debate citizens are exposed to. In particular, trustworthiness evaluations of politicians decline after exposure to incivility-focused news coverage, especially when politicians in the debate also behaved uncivilly. Incivility-focused news coverage also leads to lower news credibility evaluations, but only when a mismatch occurs, i.e. when the politicians in the debate behaved civilly. This shows news coverage of debates, as well as the debates themselves, affect the outcomes, indicating that we should caution against looking into the effects of televised debates “without taking into account the total communication environment” (Lang & Lang, 1978, p. 322; Benoit & Currie, 2001).

Benoit, W. L., & Currie, H. (2001). Inaccuracies in Media Coverage of the 1996 and 2000 Presidential Debates. Argumentation and Advocacy, 38(1), pp. 28-39.
Cappella, J. N. (2002). Cynicism and Social Trust in the New Media Environment. Journal of Communication, 52(1), pp. 229-241.
Cho, J., Shah, D. V., Nah, S., & Brossard, D. (2009). ‘Split Screens’ and ‘Spin Rooms’: Debate Modality, Post-Debate Coverage, and the New Videomalaise. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 53(2), pp. 242-261.
Lang, G. E., & Lang, K. (1978). Immediate and Delayed Responses to a Carter-Ford Debate: Assessing Public Opinion. Public Opinion Quarterly, 42(3), pp. 322–341.
Muddiman, A. R. (2013). The Instability of Incivility: How News Frames and Citizen Perceptions Shape Conflict in American Politics. Retrieved from University of Texas Libraries: https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/23311

Author

• Ine Goovaerts, KU Leuven