TY  - JOUR
AB  - Online media offer unprecedented access to digital public spheres, largely enhancing users’ opportunities for participation and providing new means for strengthening democratic discourse. At the same time, the last decades have demonstrated that online discourses are often characterised by so-called ‘dark participation’ the spreading of lies and incivility. Using ‘problematic behaviour theory’ as framework and focusing on incivility as a specific form of dark participation, this article investigates the role of users’ personal characteristics, media use, and online experiences in relation to offensive and hateful online behaviour. Using a random-quota survey of the German population, we explored how dark personality traits, political attitudes and emotions, the frequency and spaces of online-media use, and users’ experiences with both civil and uncivil online discourses predicted participants own uncivil behaviour, such as posting, sharing, or liking uncivil content. We found that 46% of the participants who had witnessed incivility in the last three months also engaged in uncivil participation. A hierarchical logistic regression analysis showed that incivility was associated with manipulative personality traits as measured by the dark triad, right-wing populist voting intentions, and frequent social-media use. Experiences with both civil comments and hate speech predicted higher levels of uncivil participation. The strongest predictor was participants’ personal experiences with online victimisation. Overall, the results confirmed that dark participation in the sense of uncivil engagement results from the interplay of personality traits, an online environment that allows for deviant engagement, and, most importantly, participants’ experiences in said environment.
AU  - Frischlich, Lena
AU  - Schatto-Eckrodt, Tim
AU  - Boberg, Svenja
AU  - Wintterlin, Florian
DA  - 2021-02-03
DO  - 10.17879/13059462401
KW  - dark participation
KW  - dark triad
KW  - hate speech
KW  - incivility
KW  - offensive speech
KW  - personality
KW  - political anger
KW  - problematic behaviour theory
KW  - social media
KW  - victimisation
LA  - eng
N1  - Media and Communication 9 (2021) 1, 195-208
N1  - Finanziert durch den Open-Access-Publikationsfonds der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU Münster).
N1  - Förderer: Federal Ministry of Education and Research / Projektnummer: 16KIS0496
N1  - Funding organisation: Federal Ministry of Education and Research / Project number: 16KIS0496
PY  - 2021-02-03
TI  - Roots of Incivility: How Personality, Media Use, and Online Experiences Shape Uncivil Participation
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:6-83049452481
Y2  - 2024-12-27T08:20:09
ER  -