Incivility in Congressional Tweets
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6179983 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrew O Ballard (0000-0002-1510-4289, American University, corresponding author), Ryan Detamble (American University), Spencer Dorsey (Unaffiliated researcher), Michael Heseltine (0000-0002-2943-4414, Duke University), Marcus Johnson (0000-0001-9723-1515, American University) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 769-780 |
| Publication date | 2022-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Politics Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1532-673X • E-ISSN: 1552-3373 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1532673x221109516 |
| OpenAlex | W4283206121 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 18 |
| References cited | 34 |
Civility in political discourse is often thought to be necessary for deliberation and a healthy democracy. However, incivility is on the rise in political discourse in the United States—even from members of Congress—suggesting that political incivility may in fact be a tool to be used strategically. When and why, then, do members of Congress use incivility in their rhetoric? We develop and test expectations for the usage of political incivility by members of Congress on Twitter, using every tweet sent by a member of Congress from 2009–2020 coded for the presence of uncivil rhetoric via a novel application of transformer models for natural language processing. We find that more ideologically extreme members, those in safer electoral situations, and those who are in a position of political opposition are more likely to use incivility in their tweets, and that uncivil tweets increase engagement with members’ messages
Civility · Democracy · Ideology · Incivility · Linguistics · Political communication · Political science · Politics · Public opinion · Public relations · Rhetoric · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology
The Democratic Cost of Pursuing Virality
Measuring Partisanship and Representation in Online Congressional Communications
Asymmetric Polarization in Online Media Engagement in the United States Congress
Detecting and measuring social media attacks on American election officials
White partisans’ reactions to real politicians’ tweets framing white supremacy and radical Islam as terrorist threats
Incivility or Invalidity? Evaluating Perspective API Scores as a Measure of Political Incivility
Unpacking the complexity of online incivility
Going Local? Localized Rhetoric in Congressional Communications
Using Twitter to Detect Polling Place Issue Reports on U.S. Election Days
Promoting Conspiracy Theories Strategically
Rage on the Record
Effects of Over-Time Exposure to Partisan Media and Coverage of Polarization on Perceived Polarization
The Causal Effect of Candidate Extremity on Citizens’ Preferences
Gendered Backlash Depends on the Context. Reassessing Negative Campaigning Sanctions Against Female Candidates via Large-Scale Comparative Data
Responsive rhetoric
Believing What Politicians Communicate
Polarizing Online Elite Rhetoric at the Federal, State, and Local Level During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Building Support Through the Personalization of Twitter Messages in a Permanent Campaign
Uncivil Agreement
Incivility on Facebook and political polarization
Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization
The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication
A Bad Workman Blames His Tweets
Disrespectful Democracy
New media for the new electorate? Congressional outreach to Latinos on Twitter
Primary Elections and the Quality of Elected Officials
The art of invective
Thanks for (actually) responding! How citizen demand shapes politicians’ interactive practices on Twitter
Uncivil and personal? Comparing patterns of incivility in comments on the Facebook pages of news outlets
Public Opinion Toward Presidential Power
Legitimating a platform
The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. elections in the 21st century
Does affective polarisation increase turnout? Evidence from Germany, The Netherlands and Spain
Candidate Strategy and the Decision to Go Negative
When Primary Campaigns Go Negative
Primary Elections and Candidate Ideology
Dynamics of Polarizing Rhetoric in Congressional Tweets
How Political Parties Shape Public Opinion in the Real World
Partisan Elites as Culprits? How Party Cues Shape Partisan Perceptual Gaps
One Vote Out of Step? The Effects of Salient Roll Call Votes in the 2010 Election
Twitter Taunts and Tirades
Affective polarization in multiparty systems
How partisan affect shapes citizens' perception of the political world
The Dynamics of Political Incivility on Twitter
Minority Party Capacity in Congress
Does Attack Advertising Demobilize the Electorate
How Elite Partisan Polarization Affects Public Opinion Formation
Politics as the Mobilization of Anger
| Unique citing works | 18 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 6 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 16 |