Negative Impact of Online Political Incivility on Willingness to See Political Comments

Abstract: Recently, there has been significant attention on online political incivility. While previous research suggests that uncivil political comments lead people to be less willing to see more comments on the same issue, two critical questions have received limited exploration: (1) Are people exposed to uncivil political comments less willing to see other comments from the person who posted the uncivil comment?; (2) Are people exposed to uncivil political comments less willing to see comments from people who have different thoughts than them? To address these questions, the present study conducted a preregistered online survey experiment targeting Japanese citizens, focusing on the pro- vs anti-Kishida cabinet conflict in Japan. The results show that the participants were less willing to see other comments by the person who posted the comment when the comment was uncivil than when it was civil. In addition, the anti-Kishida participants were less willing to see political opinions posted online by people who have different thoughts than them when the comment was uncivil than when it was civil, while the participants in the other subgroups did not show a similar tendency. These findings suggest that uncivil expressions in online political communication might prompt people to avoid reading opinions from those who have different thoughts than them, which might promote political echo chambers.