Your social ties, your personal public sphere, your responsibility: How users construe a sense of personal responsibility for intervention against uncivil comments on Facebook

8Citations
Citations of this article
23Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

This article is free to access.

Abstract

User intervention against incivility is a significant element of democratic norm enforcement on social media, and feeling personally responsible for acting is a vital prerequisite for intervention. However, our insight into how users construe their sense of personal responsibility and expectations of other users remains limited. By theoretically foregrounding user perspective, this study investigates the boundaries and nuances of user responsibility to intervene against incivility. Empirically, it draws on 20 qualitative vignette interviews with young people in Germany. The findings show that as contexts collapse in users’ newsfeeds, the imagined boundaries of personal public spheres and own social relationships with uncivil users serve as heuristics for hierarchizing and delimiting personal responsibility to intervene. Beyond abstract individual responsibility for the public discourse, practical responsibility is distributed among personal public spheres.

References Powered by Scopus

I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience

2910Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct: A Theoretical Refinement and Reevaluation of the Role of Norms in Human Behavior

2326Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

The "nasty effect:" online incivility and risk perceptions of emerging technologies

554Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Cited by Powered by Scopus

Message Deletion on Telegram: Affected Data Types and Implications for Computational Analysis

8Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

“Intervening Is a Good Thing but..”: The Role of Social Norms in Users’ Justifications of (Non-)Intervention Against Incivility

3Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Peer correction of misinformation on social media: (In)civility, success experience and relationship consequences

2Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Gagrčin, E. (2024). Your social ties, your personal public sphere, your responsibility: How users construe a sense of personal responsibility for intervention against uncivil comments on Facebook. New Media and Society, 26(8), 4299–4316. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221117499

Readers' Seniority

Tooltip

PhD / Post grad / Masters / Doc 4

40%

Lecturer / Post doc 3

30%

Professor / Associate Prof. 2

20%

Researcher 1

10%

Readers' Discipline

Tooltip

Social Sciences 7

58%

Psychology 3

25%

Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Bi... 2

17%

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free