The article,“Incivility Online: Affective and Behavioral Reactions to Uncivil Political Posts in a Web-based Experiment” by Bryan T. Gervais acknowledges that the presence of incivility evident in the online political communication impacts successful and factual online interactions. The author supports his arguments by manipulating exposure to uncivil political dialogue in an online communication forum. Gervais finds out that exposure to harsh, uncivil political debate causes sentiments of rage and aversion, lowering enjoyment with message board discourse. He also found out that when people are exposed to like-minded incivility, there is an increase in the use of uncivil behavior in the comments submitted by users on the message board posters, which is a result of the presence of emotional incivility and histrionic. While the results of Gervais’s study are factual, some limitations exist presented by his experimental research choice. This paper criticizes the aspects of experiments employed by Gervais in his study and provides some ways that the study could be improved.
First, the author’s choice of using democrats and republicans to measure the like-minded or disagreeable incivility is too broad and only portrays a tendency of disagreeing/agreeing (Gervais, 2015). When dealing with political issues, a researcher must ensure that they are fair to either side to avoid biasness. The author did not consider other factors, including the race and ethnicity of his population or both two parties. In most cases, opinions on whether the Democrats or the Republicans can agree on basic facts will always differ by race and ethnicity (Lallogia, 2018). The minor difference in these attitudes between Republicans and Democrats is due to these racial and ethnic variances. In addition, the author ought to be aware that the audience for his research might also have different views regarding his conclusions on like-minded or disagreeable incivility by using democrats and republicans.
Second, Gervais chose the topic of student debt relief policy to evaluate the extent of incivility in political communication (2015). I don’t think the topic carries too much weight since education matters don’t carry too much weight to lure differences in ideologies despite being used as a political agenda in campaigns. The author also tests openness to counterarguments by asking about satisfaction during the post-test. However, he ought to have included the question in the pre-test so that he gets the participants in the initial stage of the study. Questions like, “How much do you like to debate with people with opposite political views?” and “Do you like to talk with people with opposing viewpoints?”
These questions help to know people’s perceptions regarding their ability to accommodate the views of others, especially about political ideologies among uncivil political post sponsors. Rather than sticking to the parties, democrats and republicans, Gervais should have further categorized the participants by race or ethnicity. For instance, he should have specified the number of whites, blacks, or Hispanics from the Democrats and Republican parties. It would have eliminated the possibility of biasness regarding several sensitive matters. President Obama was black and a Democrat; hence any policies that he might have raised to help blacks in America would be taken well by Blacks from the Republican Party. Likewise, an uncivil political post about racism against President Obama, who is Black and Democrat, will not go well with Blacks who are Republicans.
References
Gervais, B. T. (2015). Incivility online: Affective and behavioral reactions to uncivil political posts in a web-based experiment. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 12(2), 167-185.
Lallogia, J. (2018). Republicans, Democrats agree: They can’t agree on basic facts | Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center; www.pewresearch.org. Web.