Community Building or Neighborhood Food Fights? Discourse on Nextdoor.com

• In Event: Unpacking Democracy in Urban Politics

Abstract

Nextdoor.com is a social media platform designed to allow individuals to connect with neighbors. Because Nextdoor does not publish an API (application programming interface) and makes it difficult for researchers to scrape data, there is very little research examining political discourse on this platform. Anecdotally, political discussions on Nextdoor are uncivil and hostile, with partisan diatribes and name-calling rampant . However, unlike most social media platforms, on Nextdoor individuals do not have complete control over who they interact with: they do not choose their friends but rather interact with individuals in their neighborhood. As a result, it creates spaces that could potentially foster cross-cutting exchanges among individuals who disagree. The goal of this paper is to analyze both the level and type of incivility on Nextdoor as well as the prevalence and dynamics of cross-cutting exchanges. I will collect a random sample of threads addressing land use, transportation and housing issues in San Diego, CA over a two-month period. These data will be analyzed qualitatively using Nvivo, coding for both instances of incivility as well as positive aspects of cross-cutting disagreements, such as offering facts and reasoning to support conclusions. My hypothesis is that most political exchanges on Nextdoor contain both high levels of incivility and thoughtful reason-giving to support arguments. Because conversations occur between strangers who may hold different worldviews, conversations often devolve into name calling and pejorative speech. On the other hand, because the issues addressed are local and residents have extensive knowledge of them, they are capable of offering coherent reasoning to support their positions.

Author

• Brian E. Adams, San Diego State University