VISUAL PERCEPTIONS OF DIALOGUE: STRUCTURES OF ONLINE DISCUSSION THAT FOSTER CIVILITY NORMS

Thesis (Ph.D.), Communication, Washington State UniversityDigital media present an opportunity for the public to engage in conversation. Although digital discussions rarely meet the standards outlined in deliberative dialogue, prior political communication theory has presented rules to guide conversations that foster democratic ideals. However, despite digital platforms’ and theorists’ best attempts, issues of undemocratic speech and incivility can easily be found on most online discussion spaces. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine ways to mitigate the effects and frequency of uncivil dialogue from the starting point of the ecological rationality of heuristic processes. Online discussion spaces present social information through the design and structure of the webpage. This information is then used to form perceptions of group norms, which have been strongly linked to behaviors in prior research. In most social encounters, there is more information available than can be consumed by the individual. Heuristic processes allow a person to form perceptions by ignoring some of the information and applying rules of thumb to interpret the selected data. In contexts where a heuristic process is well-adapted, these cognitive shortcuts can result in accurate perceptions while being more efficient than non-heuristic processes. Even though heuristic processes are used extensively in decision making, no prior research has examined the issue of online incivility from this theoretical grounding. In digital discussion spaces, the imitate-the-majority (following the majority of comments) and the imitate-the-successful (following those that earned the most social endorsements) heuristic processes are likely candidates to inform perceptions of descriptive incivility norms, that is, how uncivil the group is normally. Through two experiments in which participants viewed digital conversations where comments and social endorsements were manipulated, participant’s perceptions of norms were mapped to heuristic processes. Evidence shows the imitate-the-majority heuristic was used extensively, even though comments only represents a slice of the conversation group engaged through social endorsements. The use of heuristic processes was also partially moderated by level of group identification the participant reported with the discussion group. It was also found that changing the design of social endorsements to attract more attention did not lead to perceptions that followed the imitate-the-successful heuristic process.Washington State University, Communicatio