Faceless Rage: An Examination of Incivility on Facebook News Pages

• In Event: The Online Construction of Crime and Deviance

Abstract

In the news, we hear of violence triggered by acts of incivility. Research indicates a rise in incivility on social media sites, especially concerning political, social, or religious ideologies. By utilizing Grounded Theory methods, and coding for common themes, this paper intends to examine the comment sections of articles on news and political pages concerning the 2016 election on Facebook to determine if incivility exists, where it most likely exists, and who are the targets of incivility. Utilizing levels of degradation, an overall definition of a troll, and delineated definitions of what constitute trolling behavior; we categorized what types of incivility are occurring and to what extent. We also examined whether incivility is restricted to a small group repeating these acts across the same Facebook page. If incivility is on the rise, do those numbers match with violent crime rates nationwide? Finally, we propose that criminologists and criminal justice professionals may be best served by determining if current, or future, acts of violence can be linked to online incivility.

Authors

• Nicholas Clark, Indiana University Kokomo

• Rachel Clark, Indiana University Kokomo

• Courtney Hutchison, Indiana University Kokomo

• Madeleine Mitchell, Indiana University Kokomo

• Edward Name, Indiana University Kokomo

• Alexa Snowden, Indiana University Kokomo

• Angela Glosser, Indiana University Kokomo