Main Objective and Research Questions
The Oz, Zheng and Chen (2017) article, titled ‘ twitter versus Facebook: comparing incivility, impoliteness and deliberative attributes’ had a main objective of comparing how social media users interact in these platforms and the kind of posts and comments that are made on each. Additionally the article attempted to show the conversations held in each platform are open to cases of incivility, disrespect and impoliteness such as insults and pejorative speech. Posts and comments in twitter and Facebook were analyzed to check if there were real cases of incivility, impoliteness and deliberative attributes in them. Typically, the study followed Facebook posts and tweets made by the White house in their official Facebook page and twitter accounts. The main research questions for the research were, would people be more uncivil, and impolite and less deliberative on twitter versus Facebook? The authors also tried to examine whether sensitive topics would elicit more incivility and impoliteness and fewer deliberative comments than less sensitive topics.
Methods and Sample Description
Quantitative content analysis was the method that was used for this study. The content analysis helped the authors to evaluate what people were posting on the sites. Additionally it helped in testing chances of incivility, impoliteness and deliberative attributes. The participants were randomly selected from the general population, but those who were conversant with political debates were preferred in the research. The participants were asked to respond to Facebook posts and tweets made by the white house, then their responses were analyzed. The analysis was done in two phases, first the participant had to have interest in politics and have had such conversation online. In the second phase they were to respond to white house tweets and posts and after that their response would be measured on matters of incivility, and impoliteness.
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Study Design, Procedure and Incentives
The study by Oz, Zheng and Chen was based on the affordances theory which states that people have a relationship with technology that influences the process by which they use the technologies. There was also an ideology that mentions that people feel to be de-individuated online and the individual identity become less important than highly salient group identity. Post lengths and level of de-individuation were measured in this research. The major reason these two factors were used for analysis is because with longer posts it provides the user with an opportunity to support their arguments with evidence and facts.
The study was undertaken in summer of 206, during president Barack Obamas second term. The sensitive posts that were considered in these research include same sex marriages, gun control, terrorism and education. The non-sensitive topics were limited to technology and president Obamas overseas visits. Random Facebook posts by the white house form 205 were selected and coed as either sensitive or non-sensitive. The participants commented and made posts on the issues that appeared on these page and the results were collected. There was 10 posts in both white house official page and twitter account. The participants made 844 comments on the selected posts and 614 replies on the selected tweets. Then the comments were coded as sensitive or non-sensitive. A second experiment was done during the term of President Donald trump. And in this study the participants were recruited through MTurk online application. In this second study issues response was based on immigration and healthcare.
Conclusions and Limitations of the Study
The study found out that sensitive topics elicited greater incivility, impoliteness and deliberations on the same issues can be mixed and unpredictable. It was discovered that observable deliberative attributes can take place online. It was also discovered that the level of incivility of comments was consistent on Facebook while in twitter sensitive topics elicited significant more incivility than non-sensitive stories. The major limitation is that the study used topics that were predominantly on the new, if there was a wide range of topics, results could be different.
Reference
Oz, M., Zheng P., & Chen, G. M., (2017). Twitter Versus Facebook: coomparign incivility, impoliteness and deliberative attributes. Sage publihers. DOI: 10.1177/1461444817749516
