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Online political talk is often deemed toxic to democracy due to the pervasiveness of incivility. This study challenges this perspective by examining the discursive and contextual conditions related to interpersonal incivility in contrast with incivility targeted at political elites on Facebook comments and news websites. Findings suggest that much of the vitriol online is targeted at politicians and characterized by justified opinions. Interpersonal incivility is associated with disagreement, but less likely to be associated with replies—suggesting that users refrain from uncivil direct confrontation. Taken together, these findings indicate that interpersonal-directed and elite-directed incivility are characterized by distinct discursive features and happen in opposite directions. Incivility is more than just shouting, and it is frequently used to criticize political elites and justify opinions than to attack others in a discussion. As such, it should not be inherently associated with toxic behaviors or be considered a problematic feature of online discussions.

This paper examines the ways people engage in political conversation triggered by exposure to political news in two different informal platforms in Brazil: Facebook and news websites. We analyze the extent to which disagreement is associated to discursive traits that are commonly associated with deliberative behavior, such as directly engaging with others, and trying to justify one's views, and negative traits, such as incivility. The contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows. First, this paper emphasizes the importance of looking beyond a single platform and a single topic to understand political discussion online. Second, we demonstrate that online disagreement is positively associated with both deliberative traits, such as justified opinion expression, and non-deliberative traits, such as incivility, and argue that the latter is not enough to dismiss the value of political talk. We also demonstrate that the topic of a news story is relevant both to drive political conversation and to spark political disagreement: controversies involving celebrities and stories covering international affairs are more likely to drive heterogeneous conversations than more conventional political topics (e.g. government, policy), even though these are the topics that tend to attract more political talk. Finally, this study contributes to fill an important gap in the literature, looking beyond the US and Western European contexts by examining political talk in Brazil, the fourth largest digital market in the world.

This paper examines the ways people engage in political conversation triggered by exposure to political news in two different informal platforms in Brazil: Facebook and news websites. We analyze the extent to which disagreement is associated to discursive traits that are commonly associated with deliberative behavior, such as directly engaging with others, and trying to justify one's views, and negative traits, such as incivility. The contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows. First, this paper emphasizes the importance of looking beyond a single platform and a single topic to understand political discussion online. Second, we demonstrate that online disagreement is positively associated with both deliberative traits, such as justified opinion expression, and non-deliberative traits, such as incivility, and argue that the latter is not enough to dismiss the value of political talk. We also demonstrate that the topic of a news story is relevant both to drive political conversation and to spark political disagreement: controversies involving celebrities and stories covering international affairs are more likely to drive heterogeneous conversations than more conventional political topics (e.g. government, policy), even though these are the topics that tend to attract more political talk. Finally, this study contributes to fill an important gap in the literature, looking beyond the US and Western European contexts by examining political talk in Brazil, the fourth largest digital market in the world.

Entrevista realizada em novembro de 2015 por Patrícia Gonçalves Rossini, pesquisadora associada ao Grupo de Pesquisa em Mídia e Esfera Pública (EME-UFMG), por ocasião da participação de Jennifer Stromer-Galley do III Colóquio Internacional: Sistema Deliberativo e Mídia Interconectada.

A crescente adoção de ferramentas de participação digital em diversas instâncias da esfera política tem revigorado o debate acerca dos benefícios da Internet para a democracia. Partindo do pressuposto de que a participação política é resultado de uma cidadania construída, na qual a criação de ferramentas participativas não implica, necessariamente, o fortalecimento da relação entre a sociedade e a esfera política, o objetivo deste artigo é analisar o papel atribuído ao cidadão no Portal E-Democracia, da Câmara dos Deputados. O estudo parte da revisão de literatura sobre e-participação e deliberação online, enfatizando os efeitos do desenho participativo na criação de affordances e constrangimentos para a participação, com o objetivo de analisar de que maneira o desenho participativo do Portal E-Democracia afeta as possibilidades de engajamento do cidadão na tomada de decisão política.

Democratic governments are increasingly adopting the Internet to foster political participation. With a varied array of e-consultation, e-deliberation, and e-participation initiatives, the Internet provides opportunities for citizens to engage with political institutions in several ways. This article contributes to this literature by analyzing a Brazilian case, the House of Representatives' Portal E-Democracia—an initiative that promotes citizen participation in lawmaking issues. We analyze how citizens engaged in the discussions around the political reform agenda, an important issue and a response to social movements and protests in June 2013. We specifically look into the dynamics of interaction and the heterogeneity and civility of these discussions. We also investigate whether participants were interested in providing solutions to the issues at stake.

A proposta deste trabalho exploratório é discutir a relação entre o uso de mídias sociais e a tomada de decisão eleitoral, com base nos aportes de teorias do comportamento eleitoral e de autores que discutem acesso à informação política online, sobretudo a partir da tese da exposição inadvertida (BRUNDIDGE, 2010). Este artigo concentra-se no uso do Twitter nas eleições presidenciais brasileiras de 2010 e desloca o tradicional foco das campanhas para compreender a perspectiva dos usuários. Por meio de análise de dados obtidos por um questionário aplicado online, busca-se verificar como os eleitores brasileiros acessaram informação, interagiram com os candidatos e avaliaram o uso do Twitter nas eleições 2010.

WhatsApp is one of the most used messaging platforms across the globe and is particularly prominent in the Global South. Despite being a private messaging app, WhatsApp is becoming an important platform for political information and political talk, which raises concerns about the spread of misinformation on the platform. This paper presents comprehensive descriptive results of a national survey of internet users in Brazil, focusing on political information on social media. Our data shows that Brazilians are very active social media users, particularly on Facebook and WhatsApp, and consider these platforms very important to fulfill a myriad of political and informational aims. However, they also demonstrate great concern about the quality and accuracy of information circulating online. Despite finding significant differences in how these two platforms are used, the data suggests that WhatsApp is becoming central to how Brazilians have access to and engage with politics.

WhatsApp is one of the most used messaging platforms across the globe and is particularly prominent in the Global South. Despite being a private messaging app, WhatsApp is becoming an important platform for political information and political talk, which raises concerns about the spread of misinformation on the platform. This paper presents comprehensive descriptive results of a national survey of internet users in Brazil, focusing on political information on social media. Our data shows that Brazilians are very active social media users, particularly on Facebook and WhatsApp, and consider these platforms very important to fulfill a myriad of political and informational aims. However, they also demonstrate great concern about the quality and accuracy of information circulating online. Despite finding significant differences in how these two platforms are used, the data suggests that WhatsApp is becoming central to how Brazilians have access to and engage with politics.

WhatsApp is one of the most used messaging platforms across the globe and is particularly prominent in the Global South. Despite being a private messaging app, WhatsApp is becoming an important platform for political information and political talk, which raises concerns about the spread of misinformation on the platform. This paper presents comprehensive descriptive results of a national survey of internet users in Brazil, focusing on political information on social media. Our data shows that Brazilians are very active social media users, particularly on Facebook and WhatsApp, and consider these platforms very important to fulfill a myriad of political and informational aims. However, they also demonstrate great concern about the quality and accuracy of information circulating online. Despite finding significant differences in how these two platforms are used, the data suggests that WhatsApp is becoming central to how Brazilians have access to and engage with politics.

In this study, we investigate dysfunctional information sharing on WhatsApp and Facebook, focusing on two explanatory variables--frequency of political talk and cross-cutting exposure--and potential remedies, such as witnessing, experiencing, and performing social corrections. Results suggest that dysfunctional sharing is pervasive, with nearly a quarter reporting sharing misinformation on Facebook and WhatsApp, but social corrections also occur relatively frequently. Platform matters, with corrections being more likely to be experienced or expressed on WhatsApp than Facebook. Taken together, our results suggest that the intimate nature of WhatsApp communication has important consequences for the dynamics of misinformation sharing, particularly with regard to facilitating social corrections.

Political campaigns have a temporal nature, which means that the strategic environment shapes the nature of candidate communication, especially the stages of campaigning—from surfacing to the general election. As social media platforms have matured and political campaigns have normalized their use of those platforms in this decade, this study examines the 2016 and 2020 US presidential campaign communication on Facebook and Twitter using data from the Illuminating project at Syracuse University. Our objective is to explore how the stages of the campaign cycle shape political communication. We also explore social media platforms as additional factors. Moreover, given the distinct and anti-normative communication style of Donald Trump, we examine whether his communication is an outlier relative to his competition in the primaries and the general election, and while a challenger in 2016 and an incumbent in 2020. Our results suggest that campaign messaging changes over the stages of the campaign, with candidates more likely to advocate for themselves during the crowded primaries, and then engage in high volumes of calls to action in the general election. The 2016 posts were substantially more attack-focused than in 2020. There is some evidence to suggest that the global pandemic affected the ways in which campaigns used their social media accounts. Of note, campaigns seem to heavily rely on Facebook for all types of strategic communication, even as the academic community primarily analyzes Twitter. Finally, Trump's sum-total of his discourse is less negative than Clinton's in 2016 and more advocacy-focused, overall.

COVID-19 is unique in that it is the first global pandemic occurring amidst a crowded information environment that has facilitated the proliferation of misinformation on social media. Dangerous misleading narratives have the potential to disrupt 'official' information sharing at major government announcements. Using an interrupted time-series design, we test the impact of the announcement of the first UK lockdown (8–8.30 p.m. 23 March 2020) on short-term trends of misinformation on Twitter. We utilise a novel dataset of all COVID-19-related social media posts on Twitter from the UK 48 hours before and 48 hours after the announcement (n = 2,531,888). We find that while the number of tweets increased immediately post announcement, there was no evidence of an increase in misinformation-related tweets. We found an increase in COVID-19-related bot activity post-announcement. Topic modelling of misinformation tweets revealed four distinct clusters: 'government and policy', 'symptoms', 'pushing back against misinformation' and 'cures and treatments'.