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The distorting prism of social media: how self-selection and exposure to incivility fuel online comment toxicity

The distorting prism of social media: how self-selection and exposure to incivility fuel online comment toxicity
The distorting prism of social media: how self-selection and exposure to incivility fuel online comment toxicity
Though prior studies have analyzed the textual characteristics of online comments about politics, less is known about how selection into commenting behavior and exposure to other people’s comments changes the tone and content of political discourse. This article makes three contributions. First, we show that frequent commenters on Facebook are more likely to be interested in politics, to have more polarized opinions, and to use toxic language in comments in an elicitation task. Second, we find that people who comment on articles in the real world use more toxic language on average than the public as a whole; levels of toxicity in comments scraped from media outlet Facebook pages greatly exceed what is observed in comments we elicit on the same articles from a nationally representative sample. Finally, we demonstrate experimentally that exposure to toxic language in comments increases the toxicity of subsequent comments.
0021-9916
922-946
Kim, Jin Woo
f9c02ed8-db99-4263-aeaa-c36ecb34033e
Guess, Andrew
b7d46f03-b9cd-48da-8a32-d3fb359779ba
Nyhan, Brendan
76e1ec80-0af5-432d-9dd6-f7e8237191e4
Reifler, Jason
426301a1-f90b-470d-a076-04a9d716c491
Kim, Jin Woo
f9c02ed8-db99-4263-aeaa-c36ecb34033e
Guess, Andrew
b7d46f03-b9cd-48da-8a32-d3fb359779ba
Nyhan, Brendan
76e1ec80-0af5-432d-9dd6-f7e8237191e4
Reifler, Jason
426301a1-f90b-470d-a076-04a9d716c491

Kim, Jin Woo, Guess, Andrew, Nyhan, Brendan and Reifler, Jason (2021) The distorting prism of social media: how self-selection and exposure to incivility fuel online comment toxicity. Journal of Communication, 71 (6), 922-946. (doi:10.1093/joc/jqab034).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Though prior studies have analyzed the textual characteristics of online comments about politics, less is known about how selection into commenting behavior and exposure to other people’s comments changes the tone and content of political discourse. This article makes three contributions. First, we show that frequent commenters on Facebook are more likely to be interested in politics, to have more polarized opinions, and to use toxic language in comments in an elicitation task. Second, we find that people who comment on articles in the real world use more toxic language on average than the public as a whole; levels of toxicity in comments scraped from media outlet Facebook pages greatly exceed what is observed in comments we elicit on the same articles from a nationally representative sample. Finally, we demonstrate experimentally that exposure to toxic language in comments increases the toxicity of subsequent comments.

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Published date: 3 September 2021

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 500601
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/500601
ISSN: 0021-9916
PURE UUID: 07e0b7a2-41d2-4f7f-9e45-af481c06ca14
ORCID for Jason Reifler: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1116-7346

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Date deposited: 06 May 2025 17:00
Last modified: 24 Jun 2025 02:15

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Contributors

Author: Jin Woo Kim
Author: Andrew Guess
Author: Brendan Nyhan
Author: Jason Reifler ORCID iD

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