Abstract
Research on incivility in political communication usually defines uncivil communication as a violation of established norms. Few studies, however, have specified these norms and corroborated them using relevant theoretical concepts. This presentation aims at strengthening the foundations of incivility research by analytically reconstructing the potential normative expectations of communication participants toward the behavior of others in offline and online political communication. We propose that these expectations can be considered as communication norms, which enable cooperative communication in political debates and conflicts. We use action theory, evolutionary anthropology, and linguistics to propose a norm concept that differentiates five communication norms: an information norm, a modality norm, a process norm, a relation norm, and a context norm. Drawing on these norms, we provide a comprehensive typology of norm violations that can be used as a heuristic for empirical research on incivility and related concepts.
Short bio
Marc Ziegele (PhD, University of Mainz) is an associate professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. He leads various projects that investigate norm-violating communication and the potentials of human and AI-assisted interventions for increasing the quality of political online discussions. His research on journalism, online user discussions, and media trust has been published in international journals, such as the Journal of Communication and Communication Research. Due to his persistent commitment to a better discussion culture online, one journalist affectionately gave him the name “Dr. Troll”.