“Protesting for climate change is more constructive than your quick useless comment” – A corpus-based analysis of incivility, impoliteness, and response-time in online newsreader comments on The Guardian climate change articles

Abstract

Online newsreader comments (ONRC) constitute a vital form of user engagement and participatory communication in the virtual public sphere, enabling users to engage in discussions about important contemporary societal issues. Exposure to different ideas and opinions in news organisations’ comment sections can stimulate a free, constructive exchange among equals and contribute to deliberative democracy. However, this genre of computer-mediated communication has been subject to public debates surrounding concerns about increased incivility, impoliteness and its consequences for journalists and users. Due to the contemporary acceleration and emphasis on instant reaction in our digital lives and communication, there is less time for users to reflect and deliberate before interacting with others. This project uses a corpus-based approach to test the hypothesis that a quick speed of response is linked to an increased likelihood of incivility and impoliteness in ONRC. For this, comments from the Guardian ONRC Climate Change Corpus (Thompson & Clarke, in progress) are analysed regarding instances of name-calling, pejorative speech and hate speech. Results revealed no statistically significant relation between a fast response-time and most impoliteness forms in comments, while the analysis of some impoliteness forms indicated no relation or the reverse trend, i.e., impoliteness occurring more likely in ‘slow’ comments. Incivility was generally infrequent in the data, suggesting that these phenomena behave differently regarding speed of response. Scholars and news organisations should attend to this distinction in acknowledging the stimulating potential of impoliteness, in contrast to the greater threat of incivility, for constructive social conversations and deliberative democracy online.