Who Is More Sensitive toward Informational Incivility?

• In Event: Incivility: Understanding and Fixing Disordered Discourse

Abstract

It has long been known that the electoral campaign period is a time when the so-called "nasty politics" (Shea & Sprovery, 2012) increases its presence. It is equally known that among the various forms that it can take, the use of slander, mystifications and falsehoods to discredit opponents and enemies of the moment has become increasingly frequent and widespread. To what extent the increased presence of such practices is perceived by citizens is, however, a question that has not yet been fully clarified.
In this study we investigate on how (and if) the sensitivity of citizens towards various types of political incivility (discursive, informational, vulgar, violent, and discriminatory) varies according to the electoral and non-electoral political period.
To this end, we conducted two surveys (one in the early months of 2022 and another at the end of the campaign for the 2022 Italian general election) on a representative sample of the Italian population. Thanks to 2,000 interviews carried out with the Cawi method, we documented the evaluation of the respondents on ten statements attributable to the behavior of political actors in various areas. The selected areas are related to the various notions of political incivility intended as a lack of respect for the social and cultural norms that govern personal interactions and for those that govern the functioning of democratic systems.

The comparison between the period of everyday politics and that of the electoral campaign shows that, during the latter one, there is an increase of the respondents’ sensitivity to incivility. Indeed, the percentage of those who believe that "Italian politics has become more uncivil" grows (from 75.8% to 80.7%), as does the level of perceived unease to all types of incivility. The most significant increase, however, is recorded in relation to informational incivility (from 4.17% to 4.28%), that is the set of activities focused on spreading false/inaccurate information and the participation in defamation campaigns (use of slander and unproven accusations) against political opponents/parties. The highest sensitivity towards this type of incivility comes from individuals (News Seekers) who constantly and attentively follow the various sources of information (TV news, digital and traditional newspapers, information websites, talk shows). Conversely, the News Avoiders (i.e. those who pay no attention to the information offer) show little sensitivity towards informational incivility. In general, the predictors of a greater sensitivity towards informational incivility, identified through regression models, turn out to be a strong interest in politics and an equally clear judgement on the incivility of the electoral campaign. On the other hand, as already mentioned, a lower sensitivity is recorded when there is a clear disinterest in information and a high use of social media in the political context. In other words, the process of desensitization towards political incivility, which has already emerged in previous studies (Kenski et al., 2020), in our case seems to downsize following a high consumption of information.
Such findings, in addition to stressing the relevance of individual differences (news consumption) that affect perceptions of incivility, offer implications about the perceived "normalization" of informational incivility in contemporary democracies. The violation of the rules of information – through, for example, the use of lies, slander, conspiracy theories, misleading exaggerations, etc. –, despite compromising the correct functioning of democratic systems, is perceived in a problematic way only by a minority of citizens, those interested in following politics and the election campaign. In the other cases, however, a certain "tolerance" towards informational incivility prevails, that calls for further investigation also within contexts different from the Italian one, in light of the growth of so-called "information pollution" (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017) in contemporary societies.

Authors

• Sara Bentivegna, University of Rome

• Rossella Rega, University of Siena

• Giovanni Boccia Artieri, University of Urbino Carlo Bo