Philosophy

INFLUENCES OF ONLINE INCIVILITY

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The Influences of Online Incivility: User Responses to Apologies Comment by Microsoft Office User: Please note your Paper I should have only 1 introduction paragraph, 2 body paragraphs, and 1 conclusion paragraph, maximum. This paper is much longer than that.

Your First and Last Name here

Florida International University

PSY3215

Dr. Anabelle Andon

Date

The Influences of Online Incivility: User Responses to Apologies

Society is the most esteemed educator. The crowd that surrounds an individual can lead that person to achieve confidence or insecurity, as well as compassion or indifference. However, this is no longer just proposed by family and friends. The 21stcentury has facilitated communication greatly and perhaps the best evidence of this can be seen with the rise of social media platforms, such as Facebook. Online, people interact with more freedom than they would if they were face-to-facedue to a sense of anonymity that can be controlled by the individual (Guadagnoet al., 2013). In other words, there are very few limits placed on what someone can say on the internet, whether itis considered correct or incorrect. This study aims to explore how online social behavior can influence someone’s perception of a Facebook post.

With this goal in mind, Kim and Kim (2019) conducted an online experiment to further examine the influence of incivility/civility in comments and comments of different viewpoints. This study suggests that the communication and message style of comments in social media plays a significant role no matter the evidence or level of incivility (Kim & Kim, 2019). The topic of politics, for instance, has placed individuals in positions where they rudely disagree when they hear an opposing opinion. This was a web-based experiment and the participants were recruited by a service run by Amazon that provides greater diversity. The levels of attitude polarization, willingness to read more, and negative emotions upon reading certain comments were the variables measured. The independent variables that were manipulated in this study include the Facebook page that was presented to the participants, comments, and whether there was evidence. Results from this study suggest that individuals who read civil dissimilar comments will be more willing to read further. Individuals who read uncivil dissimilar comments will be less willing to read further and show greater levels of negative emotion as suggested by the findings. These findings support the devised study because greater levels of negative emotion may positively be correlated with less favorable rates. Also, this study suggested participants will be more willing to read further which may correlate with higher favorability rates.

A great percentage of comments posted online are disrespectful and aggressive. Weber et al. (2020) examined the effects on implicit and explicit attitudes and pro-social behavior towards refugees which was measured by the donation of money to a refugee relief organization. This study involved a sample of 253 participants which were to rate adjectives that addressed refugees. User comments may influence the actions and perceptions of other users and this study observed to what extent this may affect society’s prosocial behavior. This is why the act of donating money to a refugee relief organization was implemented: because it is a voluntary action that can help and benefit the refugees. The researchers manipulated the three research articles presented to the participants. Two of these articles were based on the European refugee crisis and the third article covered an accident at a railroad crossing which was meant to divert participants’ attention. Then, participants were randomly assigned to comments that either addressed refugees in a civil and neutral manner, negative but civil manner, or in an uncivil and hateful manner. The dependent variables were to what extent hate speech affects pro-social behavior, behavioral effects of hateful yet civil user comments, and explicit and implicit measures of attitude. Results from this study indicate that hateful user comments in addition with negative civil comments negatively alter pro-social behavior. These results support the devised study because reading uncivil, or rude, comments may affect how others rate favorability. It may even affect another individual’s choice whether they want to contribute to a discussion after reading a hateful comment or post which the devised study examines.

Indeed, on social media, there is plenty of disinformation, where the information is intentionally false, and misinformation, where the information is incorrect and exaggerated for the purpose of attention. A study conducted by Barfar (2019), focused on ten popular Facebook sources which are known to publish inaccurate and misleading information. The final data that was examined included 2,074 political posts with both disinformation posts and accurate news. The independent variables manipulated were the Facebook sources and comments selected. The dependent variables measured in this study include levels of analytical thinking, positive emotion, incivility, anger, anxiety, and sadness in response to disinformation and true news. Results showed a lack of cognitive thinking along with responses that contain incivility and anger in response to political disinformation. Also, findings indicated responses to political disinformation were filled with high levels of anger and incivility compared to the responses to true news (Barfar, 2019). There is a great concern on the rise of political polarization that could be an effect from negative user comments on social media. This relates to the devised study by suggesting that individuals will respond with anger and incivility to disinformation, or fake news. Users may consider the negative and uncivil comments less favorable than a polite response.

In a similar light, researchers Popan et al. (2019) conducted a study which tested the effects of incivility on the internet and its users. A total of 52 participants were recruited from the Psychology Department at a public university in the United States. The study was a between-participants experimental design. The independent variables were assigned to conditions of civility (high or low) and argument strength (strong or weak). Three different experiments were conducted and measured the dependent variables such as the effects of manipulated incivility, extreme levels of incivility, argument strength, and attitudes towards political groups. Findings from this study suggest people find uncivil comments irrational even when the comments involved an explanation for their reasoning (Popan et al., 2019). Furthermore, highly uncivil comments may influence how opposing political groups are viewed. Political discussions may potentially benefit people but if it involves incivility, this study suggests reasonable arguments may begin to be ignored. This study supports the devised study by suggesting uncivil comments are found irrational even if there is a reasoning afterwards, which may cause individuals to rate these users highly unfavorable.

Considering the effects of incivility, Chen and Ng (2017) conducted a study that supported their predictions related to angry and upset reactions to incivility. The researchers predicted that reading uncivil disagreement comments would anger and upset others compared to when they read civil disagreement comments (Chen & Ng, 2017). Whether someone is agreeing or disagreeing with another person, it should maintain civil to avoid negative emotions. In this study, participants rated the uncivil comments as the most angering and upsetting (Chen & Ng, 2017). Participants from this study were recruited through a web-based tool by Amazon. The study consisted of an online story with comments posted on it and participants had to respond to questions that measured dependent variables. The dependent variables in this study were the effect of comments on self and others. The independent variables were exposure to comments with congruent and incongruent conditions. The conditions were assigned to participants according to their views on abortion. Participants with a pro-life view on abortion read comments that disagreed with this view. On the other hand, participants with a pro-choice view on abortion read comments that disagreed with this view. According to the results, when experimenting on the effects of reading desirable agreement comments, no significant differences were observed. Reading an agreeable comment can maintain most users in a neutral state or possibly an increased level of happiness. This study supports the devised study by suggesting if users read desirable agreement comments, they will appear more favorable. By reading a less desirable comment, it may decrease level of happiness or favorability, as the devised study examined.

In order to examine the impact that social behavior has online, we constructed a two-part study that aims to uncover how incivility affects a person’s perception. Participants will be provided three different Facebook discussions with different levels of civil and uncivil behavior directed towards a political topic. In the rude disagreement condition, the person behind the Facebook post expressed an uncivil response when their political claim was deemed incorrect in the comments section. In the polite disagreement condition, the same Facebook poster maintained their opinion on the information in their post but did so in a civil manner. In the polite agreement condition, the Facebook poster expressed complete civility and understanding when making a false political claim. For Study One, we predict that participants who are presented with incivility and disagreement are more likely to have a negative perception of the rude individual. Furthermore, we also predict that this exposure to rude and opposing behavior is more likely to encourage participants to leave their own comments concerning the contents of the Facebook post.

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