From rudeness to reflection? Assessing the impact of uncivil mediated political discourse on political reasoning

Today's mediated elite political discourse has been subject to omnipresent criticism of rudeness and disrespect (Dryzek et al., 2019). Existing objections often depart from the assumption that political incivility has negative democratic consequences, lowering political trust, and making citizens "tune-out" (e.g., Mutz, 2015). Despite lots of concern about the negative democratic consequences of politicians being rude, some also believe that incivility can have a beneficial outcome, by adding the necessary drama that is required to grab attention and entertain in today’s overheated media landscape (e.g., Brooks & Geer, 2007). This way, the often disapproved conflict, clash, and spectacle of uncivil political discourse might actually hold democratic value and cause citizens to “tune-in”. Still, the question remains what the consequences of this increased entertainment and attention are: does a more captivating political discourse also spur people to get to work with the information and different perspectives they are presented with? Citizens’ reasoning about politics and the formation of “informed preferences’ is arguably one of the most important outcomes of political communication. To date, little is known about the impact of elite incivility on citizens’ reasoning about politics, and existing findings do paint a mixed picture. The present paper argues that the captivating nature of incivility is only useful as a tool to build political engagement if it can spur (reflective) reasoning about what is being said. A pre-registered survey experiment (N=1200) was conducted to investigate whether incivility can, in fact, increase reasoning and how this is facilitated by captivation. Treatment consists of exposure to either a civil or an uncivil fragment from a televised election debate. Such debates constitute a rather traditional form of elite political communication that is often criticized for ubiquitous uncivil attacks. Effects on citizens’ substantive reasoning capacity (a thought-listing exercise and self-reported reflection battery), and captivation (self-reported entertainment and attention) are measured. Preliminary results point to uncivil communication being more attention-grabbing indeed, but less entertaining and reasoning-inducing compared to civil political exchanges. A further examination of the data will provide deeper insight into the potential double-edged sword of norm violating elite political discourse: what drives citizens away from politics and what draws them in. Brooks, D. J., & Geer, J. G. (2007). Beyond Negativity: The Effects of Incivility on the Electorate. American Journal of Political Science, 51(1), 1–16. Dryzek, J. S., Bächtiger, A., Chambers, S., Cohen, J., Druckman, J. N., Felicetti, A., Fishkin, J. S., Farrell, D. M., Fung, A., Gutmann, A., Landemore, H., Mansbridge, J., Marien, S., Neblo, M. A., Niemeyer, S., Setälä, M., Slothuus, R., Suiter, J., Thompson, D., & Warren, M. E. (2019). The crisis of democracy and the science of deliberation. Science, 363(6432), 1144–1146. https://doi.org/10.1126/scienceaaw2694 Mutz, D. C. (2015). In-your-face politics—The consequences of uncivil media. Princeton University Press.