Developing an Incivility Dictionary for German Online Discussions–a Semi-Automated Approach Combining Human and Artificial Knowledge

Abstract

Incivility in online discussions has become an important issue in political communication research. Instruments and tools for the automated analysis of uncivil content, however, are rare, especially for non-English user-generated text. In this study, we present a) an extensive dictionary (DIKI - Diktionär für Inzivilität, English: Dictionary for Incivility) to detect incivility in German-language online discussions, and b) a semi-automated two-step-approach that combines manual content analysis with automated keyword collection using a pre-trained word embedding model. We show that DIKI clearly outperforms comparable dictionaries that have been used as alternative instruments to measure incivility (e.g., the LIWC) as well as basic machine learning approaches to text classification. Further, we provide evidence that pre-trained word embeddings can fruitfully be employed in the explorative phase of creating dictionaries. Still, the manual evaluation of DIKI confirms that detecting complex and context-dependent forms of incivility remains challenging and constant update would be needed to maintain performance. Finally, the detailed documentation of the developing and evaluation process of DIKI may serve as a guideline for further research. We therefore provide DIKI as a freely available instrument that also will be applicable in a web interface for drag-and-drop data analysis (diki.limitedminds.org).