The Impact of Uncivil and Insincere Comments on the Deliberative Quality of Online Discussions

• In Event: New Media and Political Deliberation

Abstract

Most online news media today enable and encourage their readers to comment on published content and discuss covered issues. Spontaneous discussions on these platforms among anonymous and intrinsically involved citizens have a high potential for public deliberation. This potential, however, may be lowered in practice by the behavior of the discussants. As civility, respect, and sincerity are generally considered prerequisites for successful deliberation, destructive online behavior such as flaming and trolling are expected to be detrimental to deliberative discussions. In this study we conduct an extensive and fine-grained content analysis of deliberative quality in comment threads on the two major Swiss news websites to investigate the influence of destructive comments in detail. Findings suggest that incivility and insincerity are less harmful to the quality of debates than deliberative theory would suggest. Contrary to expectations, personal attacks are found to increase the deliberative quality of subsequent comments.

Authors

• Martin Wettstein, University of Zurich

• Werner Wirth, U of Zurich