12 Civility and Democracy

Having civil conversations can be difficult, particularly online. However, it’s important that we do so for democracy. Toward that end, let’s examine two peer reviewed articles.

The first article we’re going to talk about is called “Democracy Online: Civility Politeness and the Democratic Potential of Online Discussion Groups”. It was published in 2004, which we do want to pay attention to, particularly when we were discussing anything that has to do with new media. But also when we’re talking about civility and politeness, just a few years can make a real difference. For example, we do see a difference in how people communicate before 2016 and after 2016. So in that regard, the results of this study may not be the same thing that we would find today. But I really like this study, not necessarily for the results they found, but for the way that they define and describe civility. So that’s why we’re talking about this article, even though it is old by “New Media” standards. The main point of the article was to talk about what civility is and differentiate between civility and politeness. The reason that we want to differentiate between them is because disagreement can be a good thing for democracy. When people are disagreeing, they’re discussing things and sharing ideas. That’s what we want. Politeness is really more a set of rules or etiquette. Civility is more about engaging in actions that are going to enhance democracy. One question the researchers asked is: Is online discussion civil or not civil, per their definition of civility. They only looked at one website, but they found that most of the online discussion did fit the definition of civil, which is lovely. But again, it was just one website, and it was back in 2004. But that doesn’t mean the results are useless. What we can get out of this study is that we know that discussion online can be civil. When the internet was invented many of us thought that it was going to enhance democracy, but then in many ways, it didn’t. This study gives us a little bit of evidence that it is possible that the internet can be used for for good and that people can use it to improve democracy instead of working against it. So to differentiate politeness being not the same thing as civility, politeness is a necessary but insufficient condition for civility. There are a couple different ways that you can think about politeness, you might think about it as adherence to norms and formalities, though people on average tend to behave in a certain way, that’s what’s expected out of them. And adhering to those norms is generally what we would consider to be polite. For example, it’s polite to laugh at someone’s joke even if it wasn’t funny. Another way to think about politeness is to think that is reducing conflict by using purposeful conversation strategies. So this is just being very careful about your wording to make sure that the way you say things isn’t going to cause unnecessary conflict. The third way to think about politeness is to think about it as saving face. By “face” we  mean maintaining someone’s public identity. The way though, that people would say face might be a little bit different, depending on the culture that you’re coming from. But for example, if your boss is making a bad decision, and you have to let them know, in a board meeting, that that decision is a bad decision, you want to do so in a way that maintains their identity as a competent boss because that’s how people view them: as they’re successful, competent, good decision making boss. So you can correct them in a way that does not harm that identity. A fourth way to think about it is very similar to norms; this is the idea of meeting expectations if people expect you to behave in a certain way, and doing that generally maintains politeness. So most of the time, these things are good. But it’s very important to notice that sometimes it’s not good to be polite, because politeness can actually sometimes work against civility. If someone makes a joke that is inappropriate, such as a racist joke, not laughing at that joke may violate expectations and make people unconformatable. But people should feel uncomfortable when someone makes a racist joke. But you can certainly make an argument that it wasn’t polite not to laugh at the joke, but it was civil and proper. Thus, adherence to norms can sometimes be problematic. In fact, if you look at the history of communication, you’ll find that throughout the history, and it’s still happening today, people who are fighting for social justice, the changemakers, they are very often labeled as troublemakers, or mud rackers is someone who is unnecessarily stirring the pot. Those labels can have a real impact on on people. But you can definitely argue that while people who are fighting for social change may not be polite, because they’re not following existing norms. They are being civil, because sometimes you have to stir the pot to be a good citizen, sometimes, the most civil thing you can do is a protest, sometimes the most civil thing you can do is to tell someone that they are wrong, or that things need to change. We don’t want to get caught up in trying to be polite when that comes at the cost of being civil. Another thing I wanted to mention about civility is that it does not change over time. Politeness does. For example, when I was a kid, one of the rudest things you could do would be to eat dinner, and put your elbows on the table while you were eating. Today, that’s really not considered rude anymore. So that changes, but standing up for other people or working on the collective good, that’s always civil, and that does not change over time.

Now move on to our second peer review article. This is about examining online citizenship behaviors, and social network sites. The goal here is that social network sites or SNS should promote pro social behavior. That would be the ideal. We don’t want negative things happening on social media. We want it to be used for positive things like altruism, conscientiousness, civic virtue, sportsmanship, courtesy, but we see very often that that is not the case. What can we do to improve these civility behaviors on social networks? The main point of this article is that you can improve civility by rewarding people with social capital. Social capital is basically social rewards. So the theory in this paper is really no more complicated than operant conditioning. If people get rewarded for a behavior, they’re going to be more likely to do it. And people enjoy social interaction.  We appreciate communication and support from other people. We appreciate a sense of playfulness, we like to have fun in our social interactions. But it’s only going to work if people are being responsive as well. So you can set up an environment for communication, and you can make it fun. But if no one’s actually being responsive and participating in it, then it’s not going to work. So we need all of these things to happen to be the reward. And you can see this kind of facilitated on social networks, for example, “likes” on Facebook or “retweets” on Twitter, those are ways that people can be responsive to each other. There are certain features of a social networking site that can make it more playful. In other words, make it more fun, for example by including videos. It can also be socially rewarding by introducing people and facilitating conversation for people who have shared values. For example, if you’re a member of a group on Facebook, where everybody has the same political values, and they are talking to each other on Facebook, you get to know a number of people that you maybe wouldn’t have known otherwise.  Another example is that if you express troubles or concerns online, your friends and family are going to be responsive to that and reach out to you either real time or asynchronously. So these are things that can enhance that kind of social reward. So we can try to tie it in with those kind of efforts towards altruism. So if someone gets a lot of likes when they post something altruistic, maybe they’re going to continue doing and posting about altruistic activities.

References

Chip