Incivility on Twitter during the Election Campaign: Party Leaders under Fire

• In Event: Politicians' Use of Social Media

Abstract

Among the major concerns facing democracies today, the growth in public discourse of forms of political incivility – defined as disregard for social and cultural norms governing personal interactions and democratic systems – should be given due consideration. The literature points out that the long-term consequence of these forms may be a growth of cynicism and political disaffection (Van’t Riet, & Van Stekelenburg, 2022), both of which weaken democratic systems.

From this perspective, online interactions between citizens and political actors represent a central area of study. Ample research has demonstrated the prevalence of uncivil behavior by citizens in conversations with politicians on social media platforms (Theocharis et al., 2016, 2020; Tromble, 2018; Ward & McLoughlin, 2020), which seems to hinder progress toward a more inclusive, open, and deliberative public sphere. Drawing from previous studies highlighting how uncivil attacks generally focus on prominent figures (Gorrell et al., 2020), we focus on interactions between citizens and political leaders on Twitter during the 2022 Italian General Election campaign.

Aiming to identify the factors influencing the spread of incivility, we analyzed this phenomenon on three levels: the temporal (macro), meso-contextual (targets of uncivil behaviors and types of incivility employed), and micro level (whether the dissemination of incivility is the result of the intervention of coordinated/organized groups or the posting activities of ordinary users).

The research examined tweets published from August 29th to September 25th containing at least one reference (mention, reply, hashtag, last name) to the following leaders: Giorgia Meloni (618,271), Giuseppe Conte (495,775), Matteo Salvini (318,361), Carlo Calenda (177,978), Enrico Letta (256,327). Out of a total of 1,866,712 tweets, 276,670 were found to be uncivil (14.8%). Uncivil tweets were identified using a trained algorithm (Italian version of BERT, pre-trained on a corpus based on Wikipedia) following manual categorization by analysts. The best model achieved an accuracy of approximately 85%. From this dataset, random samples of tweets were extracted (10%, according to a stratified proportional sampling defined with respect to weeks and leaders), which were manually examined by 6 coders through a content analysis sheet (Krippendorff's α = average value of 0.70). The removal of false positives and manual verification of the algorithm's output led to the identification (and coding) of 22,465 tweets.
To operationalize incivility, based on existing literature (Berry & Sobieraj, 2013; Bormann et al. 2021; Coe et al. 2014; Gervais, 2014; Hopp, 2019; Muddiman, 2017; Kenski et al., 2020; Otto et al. 2019; Rossini, 2019, 2020; Stryker et al., 2016, 2022), we coded tweets as "uncivil" if they included one of the following: (a) name-calling, vulgarity, and offensive language; (b) attacks on competence; (c) threats/violence; (d) demonization and accusations of intolerance towards individual/minority rights; (e) disinformation, slander or use of falsehoods; (f) forms of stigmatization/discrimination; (g) allegations of illegality.
To identify the role of different variables in favoring the likelihood of leaders receiving uncivil tweets from users, several binary logistic regression models were carried out. Finally, to determine whether uncivil tweets were produced by a small group of very active users or a larger number of users who sporadically participated in the electoral debate, we used the Gini coefficient, a traditional metric for detecting the degree of concentration/equidistribution.

The results reveal that as elections approach and the visibility of candidates intensifies, hostility toward leaders, particularly those who are front-runners, surges. Furthermore, analysis of diverse forms of incivility demonstrates that these vary based on the targeted individual, revealing unexpected dimensions. Contrary to our expectations, incivility directed at the sole female leader, Giorgia Meloni, is characterized not by "sexist attacks" but by demonization (association with figures and symbols reminiscent of totalitarian regimes). As for Giuseppe Conte, the prevailing themes are "illegality", “falsehoods”, and "misinformation", essentially mirroring the type of incivility employed by Conte and his party against political opponents. Finally, at the microlevel, we found that the authors of these uncivil tweets primarily consist of occasional commentators who participated only sporadically in the campaign. Overall, these findings are quite concerning as they highlight the progressive normalization of political incivility in the public sphere, with all the consequences this implies for the field of political communication and, more generally, for the quality of our democracies.

Authors

• Sara Bentivegna, University of Rome "Sapienza"

• Rossella Rega, University of Siena