Civil Discourse in a Time

of Incivility

An analysis of the American virtual climate: the state of online

discourse and future of engagement journalism

By: Chloe Young

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1

Abstract: Civil Discourse in a Time of Incivility

Technology has and continues to change at alarmingly fast rates, while humanity, as

history shows, has proven itself stubborn to adaptation. This is the reality of living in what

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, calls “the Age of

Acceleration, in his 2016 publication, ​Thank You for Being Late​. The evolution of digital media

has resulted in discomfort and struggle among an array of American industries, ​specifically ​the

press. By failing to understand what it means to effectively reach audiences in the digital age,

modern day journalism continuously fails to meet its purpose: informing and educating the

public by reporting current events to a community. Only through mastering the art of​ audience

engagement​ on new mediums can a free and thriving press sustain, but ​effectively ​engaging with

virtual audiences is only becoming more difficult, as the nationwide value of civil discourse

struggles to survive in a time of historically low incivility.

In this paper, I will explore the current climate of civil conversation in America in 2018

and whether or not social media platforms have contributed to the death of civil discussion

present day. By introducing Reddit, I’ll explore what factors makes this digital space unique

compared to other social spaces and if newsrooms will successfully be able to host meaningful

dialogue with audiences on Reddit, in the future.

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The Death of Discourse

“​One nation​, under God” - a spirit of prideful patriotism has historically unified America

since its founding in spite of political differences. At the turn of the new millenium, however, the

longevity of American patriotism entered into question. each rising generation less patriotic than

the last. While 90 percent of those born between 1925 - 45 consider themselves to be “​very

patriotic”​ , only 70 percent of millenials were willing to report high levels of patriotism(Pew

Research Center 2011). Although no definite connection linking patriotism to a country’s

unification exists, as American pride continues to generationally decrease, polarization among

political parties has grown exponentially.

In 2018, the Land of Liberty lies a land divided, resembling a pre-civil war America

where citizens view those with whom they disagree as an ultimate threat. The growing

polarization in American politics has resulted in a climate almost unrecognizable to a once

patriotic and unified nation that put aside individual beliefs for the collective pursuit of life,

liberty, and happiness. What caused this shift is not indefinite and the accumulation of a long

history of controversial change but it’s translated to all parts of American life, specifically to

one’s identity online. Through social media, the individual is granted power to broadcast

personal thoughts, feelings, and beliefs to a global audience. The interactions created through
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online spaces prove dangerously powerful propose the question: is increased incivility in online

conversation the cause or effect of declining civil discourse and rising polarization in America?

Incivility Online

When social media founding father, Mark Zuckerberg created “theFacebook” in 2004 to

connect with students at Harvard and nearby universities, he never dreamed he’d be sitting at the

head of a 500 billion dollar company with 2 billions users world wide, fourteen years later. The

exponential growth of social media may have been unforeseen and unintentional but ultimately

an inevitable fate when granting one the power of connection with an entire world. As previously

mentioned, Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and world-wide speaker on “the Age

of Acceleration” explains that

“​we​ have probably never been

more ​godlike ​as a species

than we are right now​” due to

technological growth. Only

humanity can decide whether

such power will be a blessing

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or a curse. Thus far, social media has served as both.

With a global audience, social media has become the perfect virtual market for promoting

political agenda and activism of all kinds. As of July 2018, 69 percent of social media users

believe the space plays a crucial role in “​getting elected officials to pay attention to issues”​ and

67 percent agree its rise has contributed to “​creating sustained movements for social

change”​ (Pew Research Center 2018). The expansion of online dialogue has allowed similar

individuals to connect around the world for a collective purpose. Twitter, for example, became

the host of historic movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. With millions of users

pushing vastly opposing agenda on the same platform, however, social mediums have, and will,

continue to foster hostility and strife among its users.

According to a study done by Pew

Research Center, in 2016, users

reported political discourse on

these platforms as “​less respectful,

less likely to come to a resolution,

and less civil compared with other

places people might discuss

politics”​ . Although the average user

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may confidently boast their personal agenda online, a general consensus finds these platforms to

be a poor space to converse with others, especially on a controversial subject such as politics.

These conflicting truths ask the question of why individuals would feel encouraged to advocate

trivial ideals in a space they know will likely face criticism. In 2014, journalism students from

Indiana University explored hypotheses of whether social media facilitates or attenuates

polarization. One hypothesis proposed that users are likely to consume mostly like minded points

of view, “l​eading them to form more extreme opinions in the direction of their original

inclinations, thanks to the characteristics of online space, such as more choices in media sources

and networks and more effective filtering tools”​ (Journal of Communication 2014). The

proliferation of the digital publishing industry has managed to increase diversity while also

narrowing one’s point of view, making the individual select form a wide array of digital media.

If the hypothesis previously mentioned is indeed correct, then the average user consumes content

that will encourage the individual’s pre-established beliefs. By soley consuming content that

extenuates these specific ideals, the value of factual knowledge dies in American society. Thus

forth, civil discourse struggles to survive in an online space.

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Journalism in a Time of Incivility

Historically, changes in technology have vastly transformed the journalism industry. The

introduction of both the radio and the television forced journalists to rethink what it meant to

report, and eventually, innovative adaptations gave birth to mastery of these new mediums.

Living in Friedman’s current “Age of

Acceleration”, however, technological

advancements are increasing at a considerably

faster rate than human adaptation. This is likely

due to what Friedman calls the greatest

technological boom since Gutenberg invented the

printing press: the year of 2007.

For Americans, the year 2007 went unnoticed

making technological history. In one year alone,

Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone, Facebook goes

global, Twitter launches, Google buys Youtube,

Android, Netflix, Kindle, and Bitcoin are

founded, Airbnb begins, IBM creates “Watson”,

the world’s first question-answering artificial

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intelligence, and virtual storage system, the Cloud, goes into effect. Due to these industry

shaking transformations it's no surprise that, in the last 15 years, more than half the nation's’

journalism jobs have disappeared, according to the U.S Bureau of Statistics in 2017. First, the

consumer’s demand for print fell to mere extinction due to a new free encyclopedia called the

internet and then followed the rise of social media. As of a 2018 study, 68 percent of Americans

report to consuming their news from social media, however, 57 percent believe the news they

view on these platforms is “​largely inaccurate​” (Pew Research Center 2018). Therefore, new

media causes newsrooms to gain competitors and lose the public’s trust, resulting in the decline

of an industry,

The greatest change of all comes through the new relationship between content producers

and consumers. Once a one-sided process of reporting and distributing, digital journalism serves

as a back and forth dialogue between journalists and the communities in which they cover. Thus

forth, the introduction of audience engagement journalism.

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Journalism as A Conversation

In their interview with Newsy engagement editor, Kyle Luke, The Reynolds Journalism

Institute states that the role of the audience engagement editor is to “​identify stories that are

going to resonate with our audience and discover the best strategies and tactics to deliver those

stories to our audiences from a push, a pull and a platform perspective”. I​ n the current climate

of mass media, the implementation of audience engagement has become more important than

ever before. Engagement editors play a vital role in a newsrooms success as it is their job to

facilitate communication with consumers. Journalism as a conversation, however, can be a

difficult game to play in an incivil digital sphere. In 2012, Pew Research Center studied the

contrasting tones displayed by the mainstream media versus social media when covering the

presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. The report shows that while both

candidates were displayed positively by mainstream media, television and print, on social media

coverage was perceived as overwhelmingly negative. As previously explored, the majority of

social mediums used by newsrooms: Facebook and Twitter, have been found to foster incivility,

resulting in polarization, among users. In an effort to sustain profitable journalism, new-found

journalistic specialties of audience engagement must discover innovative methods to foster

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meaningful dialogue with digital consumers, beyond the whelm of traditional social media,

Facebook and Twitter.

Reddit: The Savior of Online Discourse?

Reddit, known as the “front page of the internet” since 2005, once existed as a primitive

social network for trolling and meme humor. With 330 million users worldwide, however, the

trailblazers of engagement journalism has begun to explore this new frontier. The Reddit

platform proves unique to other traditional social medias with the potential to be the saving grace

of civil discourse online.

Source: ​Social Media Today

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While Reddit currently sits as the 5th most popular website in the United States, 81

percent of Redditors don’t use Instagram and 51 percent do not have a Twitter account,

according to ComScore. The Reddit community has been largely untapped by journalists and this

is likely due to stipulations that have not made it easy to push out mass promotional content.

Users must follow the “1 in 10” rule, which states that only one out of ten links shared may be

self-promotional.

In 2017, Reddit began to open their doors to the digital

publishing world, allowing certain newsrooms alpha

testing profile pages where they could post content to their

own account, no subreddit required. Until this point,

content on Reddit was only posted under various

subreddits, or categories, signified by /r/, an abbreviation

of URL. Although all users have a profile page that

displays their posts, posts can only be submitted to appear

on a particular subreddit. These subreddits are home to

like minded and often niche internet communities, making

Source:​ r/politics R
​ eddit the perfect space for online discourse.

The varying factor that has truly set Reddit apart is its strict implementation of

moderation. Each subreddit is overseen by at least one and often multiple Reddit users known as
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moderators. Unlike companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that aim to moderate

user-flagged content through staff funded moderation, Reddit moderators are individuals whom

either created the subreddit or were given permission to join by a previous moderator. These

individuals see to that the community's guidelines, being specific to each subreddit, are followed

by Redditors.

Providing rules that encourage civil discourse and the moderators to enforce them, Reddit

could serve as a groundbreaking enterprise digital journalism. The relationship between

newsrooms and the Reddit community, nonetheless, remains fragile as the majority of subreddits

are not found to hosting corporation sponsored content. For journalists, the strategic

implementation of Reddit cannot be fueled by desire for traffic but for meaningful engagement.

On Reddit, users spend an average of more than 13 minutes at a time on the platform, far out

beating its competitors like Facebook with users reportedly spending only 10 minutes. These

users’ dedication to the platform is reflected through the community’s value of learning and

discussion over one’s personal promotion that is often seen on traditional social media sites.

If mastered, Reddit could serve as journalism’s most innovative and impactful form of

communication with a virtual audience, however, journalists must work hard to get familiar with

the Reddit communities in which they are posting and maintain healthy relationships with

moderators. Even is such is accomplished, the issue of finding funding for such types of digital
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journalism is left unsolved as Redditors are not required to pay to converse with various news

organizations.

In spite of a time of incivility that has translated to a polarized virtual climate, Reddit has

proved to host meaningful discussions nonetheless. Whether Reddit will become a successful

platform for journalism remains indefinite, yet one thing is for certain: through Reddit,

journalists may form impactful relationships with their consumers through engaging

conversation. In an age of incivility, perhaps being able to build healthy relationships with the

common citizen is just what a struggling American press needs to keep up with changing

technologies.
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