Toxic Talk: How Online Incivility Can Undermine Perceptions of Media

Scholars are increasingly concerned with the potential for uncivil discourse to enhance political polarization in society (Mutz, 2006; Stryker, 2011). Political elites and partisans boost levels of incivility in news media (Muddiman, 2013), and people perceive higher levels of incivility in politics when individuals rather than issues are attacked (Stryker, Conway, & Danielson, 2014). The concerns over incivility extend to the online information environment, where nasty comments can harm healthy back-and-forth dialogue central to democracy that often happens in spaces such as newspapers (Coe, Kenski, & Rains, 2014; Meltzer, 2015). Early research shows that incivility in online comments can be a polarizing factor in how people perceive issues in media, particularly for individuals who hold stronger opinions before seeing the comments (Anderson, Brossard, Scheufele, Xenos, & Ladwig, 2014). In particular, incivility has been found to affect people’s perceptions of the content covered in news articles, a phenomenon dubbed the “nasty effect” (Anderson et al., 2014). It can also increase the perception that individuals in society hold polarized attitudes (Hwang, Kim, & Huh, 2014). Yet, we still do not fully understand how incivility in comments affects perceptions of the news stories themselves or the effect it can have on lines of political polarity in society. Here, we explore the effects of uncivil comments proximate to a blog post containing hard news content on individuals’ perceptions of media. We examine these effects across two controversial scientific issues—nuclear energy and nanotechnology—on perceptions of bias of the news blog post. We also examine how political ideologies are related to how people interpret incivility in online comments as it relates to perceptions of bias. In doing so, this study contributes to understanding of the polarizing nature of incivility. While this is a common concern in the literature, few have empirically tested whether online incivility heightens existing divisions in society. We find that perceptions of bias are greatest after seeing online incivility among politically conservative ideologues, providing evidence for the polarity of incivility in online comments.