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This article takes up the popular argument that much online discussion is toxic and hence harmful to democracy, and argues that the pervasiveness of incivility is not incompatible with democratically relevant political talk. Instead of focusing on the tone of political talk, scholars interested in understanding the extent to which digital platforms threaten democratic values should focus on expressions of intolerance. I demonstrate the validity of this conceptual model by investigating the discursive and contextual features associated with incivility and intolerance online in the context of public comments in two different platforms—news websites and Facebook. Results show that incivility and intolerance occur in meaningfully different discussion settings. Whereas incivility is associated with features that reveal meaningful discursive engagement, such as justified opinion expression and engagement with disagreement, intolerance is likely to occur in homogeneous discussions about minorities and civil society—exactly when it can hurt democracy the most.

In this article, we present an analysis of distinctive WhatsApp uses with a focus on group dynamics, and how they are correlated with exposure to, belief in, accidental, and purposeful sharing of misinformation as well as misinformation corrections. Based on two nationally representative surveys in Brazil, and after controlling for a range of factors, we find that (a) being part of WhatsApp groups with no ties is significantly correlated with higher exposure to, belief in, and engagement with online misinformation, including sharing misinformation and being corrected for misinformation, as well as correcting others for misinformation on WhatsApp; (b) frequency of posting on WhatsApp is also significantly correlated with all our dependent variables, suggesting the role of hyperactive minorities in the spread of misinformation; and (c) discussing current affairs in strong tie groups and having frequent one-to-one discussions are significantly correlated with only a limited number of misinformation-related attitudes and beliefs.

Abstract
While the debate around the prevalence and potential effects of fake news has received
considerable scholarly attention, less research has focused on how political elites and pundits weaponized fake
news to delegitimize the media. In this study, we examine the rhetoric in 2020 U.S. presidential primary candidates
Facebook advertisements. Our analysis suggests that Republican and Democratic candidates alike attack and demean the news media on
several themes, including castigating them for malicious gatekeeping, for being out of touch with the views of the public, and for
being a bully. Only Trump routinely attacks the news media for trafficking in falsehoods and for colluding with other interests to
attack his candidacy. Our findings highlight the ways that candidates instrumentalize the news media for their own rhetorical
purposes; further constructing the news media as harmful to democracy.

Social media is now ubiquitously used by political campaigns, but less attention has been given to public discussions that take place on candidates' free public accounts on social media. Also unclear is whether there is a relationship between campaign messaging and the tone of public comments. To address this gap, this article analyzes public comments on Facebook accounts of candidates Trump and Clinton during the US election presidential debates in 2016. We hypothesize that attack messages posted by the candidates predict uncivil reactions by the public and that the public is more likely to be uncivil when attacking candidates. We use content analysis, supervised machine learning, and text mining to analyze candidates' posts and public comments. Our results suggest that Clinton was the target of substantially more uncivil comments. Negative messages by the candidates are not associated with incivility by the public, but comments are significantly more likely to be uncivil when the public is attacking candidates. These results suggest that the public discourse around political campaigns might be less affected by what campaigns post on social media than by the public's own perceptions and feelings toward the candidates.

Even though social networking sites create a unique online public space for the exchange of opinions, only a small share of citizens participate in online discussions. Moreover, research has depicted current online discussions as highly uncivil, hostile, and polarized, and the number of heated discussions has escalated in the last two years because of health, social, and security crises. This study investigates the perceived barriers to participation in Facebook discussions, focusing on two topics: the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian War. It explores the role that the negativity of these online discussions has on participation. To investigate the perspectives of users and their personal experiences with online discussions in times of crisis, we apply a qualitative research method and interviews with participants. We collected and analyzed 50 semi-structured interviews with Czech Facebook users who participated in discussions during the spring of 2021 (i.e., Covid-19) and the spring of 2022 (i.e., Russo-Ukrainian War). The results show that, after initial mobilization at the beginning of the pandemic, the crisis reinforced several crucial barriers to participation in discussions due to the perceived persistence of polarization (e.g., the spread of disinformation, the bipolar character of discussions, negative perception of opponents), which subsequently spread to other areas and issues. The data also implies that these barriers tend to demobilize less active participants, those who do not have strong opinions, and participants who think the subject matter is not worth the heated exchange of opinions.

Negative campaigning has long concerned scholars because of the potential effects on the electorate and on democracy. Most scholarship has focused on single-election studies in the United States, whereas less is known about how campaigns go on the attack in the UK, and few compare two elections. Drawing from a dataset of Facebook posts by parties and leaders in Great Britain during the five weeks of campaigning in the 2017 and 2019 General Elections (N = 3560), we use supervised machine learning to categorise posts as negative campaigning and distinguish between attacks focused on issues and attacks on candidates' images. Our findings show that the 2019 election was more negative than in 2017, and that larger parties were more inclined to adopt attacks as a campaign strategy. Moreover, we found that party accounts posted more attack messages than leader accounts and were more focused on attacking based on issues, rather than personal character or image. Finally, we found that attack messages elicit stronger engagement from audiences, with attack messages receiving more attention, particularly attacks on image.

In this study, we investigate dysfunctional information sharing on WhatsApp and Facebook, focusing on two explanatory variables—frequency of political talk and cross-cutting exposure—and potential remedies, such as witnessing, experiencing, and performing social corrections. Results suggest that dysfunctional sharing is pervasive, with nearly a quarter reporting sharing misinformation on Facebook and WhatsApp, but social corrections also occur relatively frequently. Platform matters, with corrections being more likely to be experienced or expressed on WhatsApp than Facebook. Taken together, our results suggest that the intimate nature of WhatsApp communication has important consequences for the dynamics of misinformation sharing, particularly with regard to facilitating social corrections.

ResumoDiversos autores conceituam a Web 2.0como uma "ecologia complexa" a fim de apreender as novas configurações da esfera pública nas sociedades contemporâneas. Contudo, raros estudos desenvolvem uma caracterização sistemática da especificidade das condições de comunicação nos ambientes digitais. Este artigo tem por objetivo caracterizar, numa base comparativa, três espaços de conversação online: blogs, sitesde redes sociais (como o Facebook) e plataformas de conteúdo colaborativo (como o YouTube). A partir de uma exploração crítica da literatura corrente e de estudos empíricos, examinam-se as implicações da identificação dos participantes, o papel da moderação, a interatividade social e a natureza do público presumido. Tomando como pano de fundo as condições normativas para a deliberação, defende-se o argumento segundo o qual a relação entre o designe a organização dos espaços virtuais tem impactos específicos na configuração da argumentação e da conversação mediada. Como conclusão, indicamos algumas implicações da arquitetura técnica de distintas plataformas para pensar o ambiente complexo das conversações onlinesob uma perspectiva deliberacionista.

The notion of equality is central to public deliberation, but few researches have examined how participants construct interactions in face-to-face group discussion involving unequal conditions of authority. This study analyses discussion between slum residents and police officers in Brazil, focusing on both reciprocal and hierarchical relationships in the flow of deliberation. It contributes to explain that the expression of authority is far from straightforward. Looking at a range of authority sources (expertise, functional position, tradition, life experience) that serve to situate and re-situate participants in relation to each other in discussion dynamics helps clarifying what goes on in deliberative moments. Findings reveal that personal experiences prevail in deliberative moments whereas functional credentials predominate in non-deliberative ones. Yet, the case demonstrates that functional authority is not necessarily dominative but can be combined with certain behaviors (such as empathetic imagination, search for commonalities and self-criticism) that lead to reciprocal interactions. This study provides important insights for organizing deliberation more effectively in contexts of fear, mistrust and resentment.