Suchergebnisse

As interest in political incivility has grown, scholarly conceptualizations of incivility have diverged, often centering on politeness theory or deliberative theory, but rarely on both. The current project addresses this problem by empirically investigating a two-dimensional incivility model. Two experiments test individuals' perceptions of uncivil interactions among political figures, finding that (a) personal-level incivility (impoliteness) and public-level incivility (lack of deliberativeness and reciprocity) are distinct concepts, (b) personal-level incivility is perceived as more uncivil than public-level incivility, and (c) political figures from a person's own political party are perceived as more civil than others. Future researchers can use this two-dimensional model to bring coherence to the incivility literature and more thoroughly investigate the effects of public-level incivility.

Campus speakers, and the protests against them, have sparked debate in the U.S. about declining support for free speech. Yet, the content of such speeches has largely been ignored. Do audiences want to shut down a speaker because that speaker holds a disagreeable position, or is it the way in which that position is conveyed? That is, does disagreement generally or only difference delivered with animus—in this case, with character attacks—drive audiences toward retaliatory action? To answer, we draw from Kenneth Burke's theory of identification to investigate how audiences react to political rhetoric when they encounter character attacks against the political party with which they affiliate. We propose that the very character attacks a speaker uses to achieve identification with a target audience can also cause disidentification that engenders an oppositional audience poised to act against the speaker – in this case, to restrict the speaker's right to speak. We expect that espousing a different opinion absent character attacks will not have this effect, but we do anticipate differential effects based on the type of character attack. For this, we turn to Burke's approach to framing to determine whether character attacks presenting one's in-group party as foolish (comic frame) rather than traitorous (tragic frame) have distinct effects on the audience. We conduct an online survey experiment of U.S. residents to test whether the two types of attacks, compared to arguments that use identification strategies, decrease support for expressive rights in the context of a college campus speech. Our results indicate that character attacks increase the likelihood that participants attribute malevolence to the outgroup political party, which then decreases their support for a speaker's right to speak. Both comic and tragic attacks lead to the same outcomes. Optimistically, civilly disagreeable speeches that use identification strategies prompt normatively beneficial outcomes, suggesting that not all disagreeable content decreases free speech support. Conversely, character attacks prompt disidentification that leads to retaliatory action. These findings indicate that audiences' free speech support may be more dependent on a speaker's use of character attacks than their issue content.

This research investigates how digital news headlines influence contemporary news information seeking. In two studies (a lab experiment and a field test), we examine how the presentation of news information—traditional, summary news headlines or clickbait, curiosity news headlines—influences the attitudinal and behavioral components of news seeking. Study 1 models the news-seeking process, finding that summary headlines heighten perceptions of headline information adequacy, which increase expectations that an article will provide clear information, which in turn increase anticipated audience engagement with news compared to some curiosity headlines. Study 2 determines that individuals' selection behavior on nine local newspaper websites also favors summary headlines. The findings encourage researchers to employ information-seeking mechanisms in understanding news selection decisions.

With Americans' confidence in the news media dwindling, the quality of programming declining, and audiences turning elsewhere, the American news media is at a crossroads. We argue that news outlets should consider a new form of deliberation-based programming for local news coverage as a means of responding to these problems. As a basis for the programming, we build on public journalism (Rosen & Merritt, 1994) and deliberative citizen panels (Knobloch, Gastil, Reedy, & Walsh, 2013). By engaging citizens in the production of news, media outlets not only stand to gain viewers by increasing the quality of their issue coverage, but they also could secure their claim as a public institution providing a valuable public good. We urge media outlets to consider turning to citizen panels to determine which issues are salient and to engage in structured deliberations about those issues, which can be captured and built into content packages for use in news programming. In so doing, news outlets can help activate viewers by positioning them not as passive consumers but as engaged citizens prepared for public deliberation.

Despite evidence that a majority of people in the United States say that they want more civil politics, candidates still use incivility strategically during campaigns. Distinguishing between descriptive and injunctive norms may help explain this apparent contradiction. This study presents an experiment conducted with participants recruited at 2020 Democratic Iowa Caucus rallies that tested whether (a) individuals differ in their descriptive and injunctive normative beliefs about a variety of uncivil behaviors and (b) candidate characteristics such as gender and insider/outsider status in a party influence respondents' normative beliefs. Findings suggest that, while descriptive and injunctive norms align for some campaign behaviors, they do not for all behaviors, such as sharing false information and using insults. Additionally, men and women candidates, as well as political insider and outsider candidates, are expected to behave differently but are held to the same injunctively normative standard when uncivil behaviors are attributed to them. Future incivility researchers should continue investigating descriptive and injunctive norms to investigate whether voters dismiss descriptively common behaviors during campaigns, even if they perceive those behaviors as inappropriate and uncivil.

Political violence, while rare, continues to be a concern. Yet scholars have only recently begun testing the effects language might have on support for violence. This project examines whether different types of verbal political attacks—those related to personal- and public-level incivility—affect support for violence through perceptions of impoliteness and attributions of out-group malevolence. Two experiments conducted in the United States test the effects of political attacks in two contexts: Twitter and issue speeches. Across both studies, both types of attacks prompted perceptions of impoliteness and attributions of malevolence. In the speech context, both types of political attacks decreased support for violence through impoliteness perceptions, and personal-level incivility increased identification with violent likeminded protesters through malevolence attributions. Optimistically, attacks may make social norms salient to individuals, decreasing their support for other social norm violations, like violence. Less optimistically, attacks may increase identification with groups fighting back against the verbal attacker.