Political Incivility in the Parliamentary, Electoral and Media Arena

Crossing Boundaries

Annemarie S. Walter, Annemarie Walter, Annemarie S. Walter, Annemarie Walter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367697464
• eBook ISBN: 9781000334920
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This edited volume affords conceptual and analytical convergence in the study of political incivility by bringing together theoretical and empirical work of scholars from various (sub)disciplines studying political incivility within European countries and the USA.

It addresses the needs and challenges of comparative research, adding to a more generic theory on political incivility. Recent years have witnessed growing attention to issues of political incivility in the parliamentary, electoral and media arenas, with rudeness, hostility and vulgarity being highly prevalent in interactions between politicians, journalists and citizens. This book analyses what constitutes this political incivility, its occurrence, causes and effects in these various arenas, using several country-specific contexts, and presenting a cohesive edifice of knowledge on political incivility.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of parliamentary studies, political behaviour, political communication and political psychology, as well as more broadly to political science, communication science, media studies, psychology, sociology and to (non-) governmental institutions and those that are concerned about the quality of democracy or public debate.

Part 1 Political incivility: concept and measurement

1Civility through the comparative lens: challenges and achievements

Madison Flores, Megan Nair, Meredith Rasmussen, and Emily Sydnor

Introduction

In 2011, a shooting at a Tucson, Arizona strip mall killed six and wounded 13, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. In the wake of that shooting, US President Barack H. Obama called for an end to partisan vitriol and hatred, stating that “only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud” (Swaine, 2011). As Obama argued, civility is seen as a tool for improving democratic life; it enables deliberation, translates disagreement into dialogue, and has a positive impact on the well-being of citizens and civil society. Incivility, on the other hand, is commonly associated with polarization. It undermines our mutual respect for each other and leads to gridlock, a loss of legitimacy, and a decline in trust in government (Forni, 2010; Mutz, 2015).

Political elites in Western Europe are also concerned about the rise of incivility in their own countries. In the wake of Brexit, after both sides had accused each other of lying, alarmist rhetoric, and racism, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales called for the British people to work towards regaining “mutual respect and civility” (Shapiro, 2016; Staff, 2016). After terrorist attacks wracked Paris in 2015, the government instituted “civility lessons” for schoolchildren, aimed at improving their understanding of French values and giving “pupils a real idea of how to live together” (Willsher, 2015). The hope seemed to be that a renewed commitment to reasoned, respectful dialogue, and the absence of name-calling, obscenities, lying, and exaggeration would reduce political violence and help heal partisan divisions.

Increasingly, research into the presence and effects of incivility extends outside of the United States and Western Europe, examining its effects around the world. As research moves beyond Western cases, however, scholars encounter both methodological and normative challenges. First, while the purpose of civility–to encourage mutual respect and bridge differences of opinion–does not change, its form does. This is true across countries and also within them; what is civil to a New Yorker could be perceived as the complete opposite by someone in Ohio or Alabama, and behaviors labeled as uncivil by the British could be perfectly within the boundaries of Brazilian political discourse. In order to account for these differences, measures of civility and incivility need to be redefined across languages, nations, and political cultures. This acknowledgement of diversity in our understanding and identification of the concept, however, opens up a normative question. As measures of civility vary across countries and cultures, the concept itself can become a tool of oppression, silencing the disagreement that is vital to the democratic flow of ideas. As civility is strategically deployed for anti-democratic ends, incivility can also take on new potential as a tool for equality, representation, and minority rights.

In this chapter, we argue that research into comparative (in)civility needs to consider two questions: how do we know what is civil and how do we know if civil or uncivil acts are in line with the values of liberal democracy? To answer these questions, we first review the research on the effects of incivility in the United States and Europe and investigate the roots of civility in Western democracy. We then show that standard American measures of incivility are imperfect measures of the same concept in other countries, using China as an example. Finally, we look at state attempts to co-opt civility for anti-democratic ends and activists’ use of incivility to improve the quality of democracy.

Learning to be uncivil

Across contexts, the political environment shapes the presence and perception of incivility and facilitates citizens’ own adoption of uncivil rhetoric. In his “social learning theory,” Bandura (1977; 2002) argues that individuals make behavioral choices by watching others’ interactions with their environments and adapting on the basis of the positive or negative outcomes of those interactions.

In the United States, this habit has manifest in online discussant participants’ mimicry of the group’s tone–a negative overall cast to a conversation will lead specific people to use negative language in the own comments (Price, Nir and Cappella, 2006)–and in consumers increased willingness to be uncivil after being exposed to incivility on television talk shows or online discussion forums (Gervais, 2011; Gervais, 2015). European and Latin American researchers have found similar evidence of modeling behavior; Marcelo Jenny finds that as Austrian citizens see hostile and angry language being used by members of the Austrian government, they begin to assume that using that language is the way to best participate in politics (Jenny, Haselmayer and Rdukowsky, 2017). Hungarian politicians describe their competitors using hostile language because these negative comparisons are believed to paint the politicians as holding higher moral standing than their opponents; this, in turn, should encourage Hungarian citizens to vote for them, but instead leaves those same citizens disappointed and disgusted with their government (DeBell, 2014). Commenters on Chilean news sites that were exposed to flaming and uncivil comments built up a “normalized attitude towards aggressiveness and flaming online” (Rosenberg, 2017). As politicians throughout the world are continually shown fighting and yelling at one another rather than talking, citizens begin to think that this is the appropriate way to participate in political situations as well. Ultimately, when elected officials and members of the media use uncivil language to discuss politics or their political opponents, they are teaching citizens that name-calling and vitriol are an acceptable part of political conversation.

Political incivility proliferates because citizens mimic the incivility of political elites, but the media around the world facilitate this modeling behavior. As cable news and the internet have cemented the 24-hour news cycle, incivility has become an increasing part of political communication and online political communication in particular (Geer, 2012; Berry and Sobieraj, 2014). Research suggests that online forums and comment sections on news sites around the world have the potential to produce fruitful discussion (Coe, Kenski, and Rains, 2014; Papacharissi, 2004; Rossini, 2019; Torres da Silva, 2013). However, affordances of the technology itself–its speed, simplicity, anonymity, de-individuation, the ability to combine text, audio and video–make it easier for individuals to deploy uncivil rhetoric and more likely that they’ll perceive rhetoric as uncivil (Chen, 2017; Sydnor, 2017). And once incivility is out there, exposure to it makes people more likely to critique the original poster or engage in flaming–uninhibited (and frequently aggressive) reactions to a real or perceived aggressive comment (Hmielowski, Hutchens, and Cicchirillo, 2014; Rosenberg, 2017). Beyond this cycle in which incivility begets more incivility, the ease with which individuals can hurl insults and nasty language at members of the government or at each other has negative effects on journalism and on government around the world. A study of uncivil Tweets directed at members of the British Parliament found that while men receive more abuse on Twitter, 86% of hate speech directed at Members of Parliament is toward female elected officials (McLoughlin and Ward, 2017). Chen et al interviewed female journalists in five countries–Germany, India, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States–and found that “they appeared to be trying to strike an uneasy balance between what they see as their journalistic jobs while protecting themselves from abuse” (2020, pp.10). They find that gendered harassment–just one form of online incivility–changed how and what information was presented to citizens. While women in the UK and the US blocked or ignored trolls who harassed them online, women in India and Taiwan became careful about what they posted online, focusing on more positive news in order to minimize online hate speech.

Empirical research from around the world suggests that incivility, particularly on the internet, has profoundly impacted the relationship between governments and their citizens, and among citizens within a political community. However, research into comparative incivility needs to consider how scholarly measures of civility tend to be tied to American and European understandings of the concept. In the next section, we argue that a true comparative understanding of incivility must acknowledge the Western roots of contemporary definitions of the concept and the limitations that arise when applying a Western concept to other cultures.

The western roots of incivility and its application abroad

The roots of civility are strong and deep, reaching from the Greeks and Romans who structured entire empires around civility to ancient Chinese theorists who conceptualized municipal harmony through humanism; however, the concept is frequently understood as originating in early modernity and the European Renaissance (Bejan, 2017). Building on Aristotle’s idea of the koinōnía politikē´ or “civil society,” liberal political theorists incorporated ideas about interactions between people who disagree into their visions of the state-citizen relationship (Schmidt, 1998). Even though eminent thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Roger Williams differed in their characterization of the concept, they agreed that the success of political communities and societies relied on democratic civility.

While a commitment to civil discourse and mutual toleration has contributed to the success and resilience of liberal democratic society, these early conceptions suggest that civil discourse is necessarily restrictive, reinforcing, and privileging the status quo. Locke defined civility as a “disposition of the mind not to offend others” (Bejan 2017, pp.133). But the line around what offends others and appropriate ways to disagree is drawn by those who dictate social and cultural norms of behavior. Chafe, in his discussion of the American civil rights movement in Greensboro, North Carolina, writes that “Blacks also understood the other side of civility–the deferential po...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: The study of political incivility and its challenges
• PART 1: Political incivility: concept and measurement
• PART 2: Political incivility in the parliamentary arena
• PART 3: Political incivility in the electoral arena
• PART 4: Political incivility in the media arena
• Conclusion: The study of political incivility and how to move forward
• Index