Uncivil discourse is a pervasive feature of online political talk and is especially prevalent in the online pages of politicians. Incivility involves a “lack of respect towards other people and their views.” This study focuses on online incivility in the context of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election by investigating qualitative patterns in uncivil and intolerant public comments left on Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's Facebook profiles. I leverage a sample of 1,501 Facebook comments that were previously categorized as uncivil or intolerant and conduct a qualitative discourse analysis to identify patterns in these types of expressions to provide a better understanding of the rhetorical or argumentative roles of incivility, as well as to examine the targets of this type of discourse.

Links to Project Materials:

School of Information Studies 2020, Social Science Projects 2020, 2020