Signaling Incivility: The Role of Speaker, Substance and Tone

Most empirical tests of incivility conceive of the concept as the use of a particular tone in communication: using obscenity, calling people names, or invoking histrionic language. However, political theorists argue that the person speaking and the content of their communication can also influence the likelihood that speech is labelled uncivil. Using a survey experiment, we investigate the extent to which each of these three elements of political communication—the speaker, substance and tone—influence individual perceptions of incivility. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of twelve Tweets addressing either President Obama’s position on campus free speech (in a pro- or anti-democratic manner) or his decision not to attend the funeral of a prominent conservative politician. These Tweets either came from a politician or a college student, and were framed in either a polite or impolite (“rude, self-absorbed Obama”) manner. After reading the Tweet, participants were asked about the extent to which the message was uncivil or anti-democratic, as well as about a range of attitudes and behaviors that are influenced by incivility—trust, perceptions of legitimacy, perceptions of politics in general as uncivil. We find that the use of an impolite tone is the greatest predictor of an individual’s perception that the Tweet was uncivil; however, the use of impolite rhetoric by politicians is more likely to shape views on political trust and political incivility more broadly than if the same language is used by a citizen. Ultimately, our findings suggest that studies of political incivility need to take more than simply the tone of communication into consideration when designing research. Beyond the academic repercussions, these results suggest that advocates for increased political civility should consider concentrating their efforts on political elites, as reducing elite incivility has the greatest potential to mitigate some of the negative behavioral consequences of political incivility.