Bubble reachers and uncivil discourse in polarized online public sphere

TL;DR

This study investigates how users who connect diverse political groups on social media influence the civility of online discourse, revealing that the impact varies significantly between Brazil and Canada due to differing political contexts.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of bubble reachers and analyzes their role in shaping civility in polarized online environments across two distinct countries.

Findings

In Canada, neutral bubble reachers support less uncivil discourse.

In Brazil, neutral bubble reachers elicit more uncivil comments.

Political context moderates the effect of bubble reachers on civility.

Abstract

Early optimism saw possibilities for social media to renew democratic discourse, marked by hopes for individuals from diverse backgrounds to find opportunities to learn from and interact with others different from themselves. This optimism quickly waned as social media seemed to breed ideological homophily marked by "filter bubble" or "echo chambers." A typical response to the sense of fragmentation has been to encourage exposure to more cross-partisan sources of information. But do outlets that reach across partisan lines in fact generate more civil discourse? And does the civility of discourse hosted by such outlets vary depending on the political context in which they operate? To answer these questions, we identified bubble reachers, users who distribute content that reaches other users with diverse political opinions in recent presidential elections in Brazil, where populism has deep roots in the political culture, and Canada, where the political culture is comparatively moderate. Given that background, this research studies unexplored properties of content shared by bubble reachers, specifically the quality of conversations and comments it generates. We examine how ideologically neutral bubble reachers differ from ideologically partisan accounts in the level of uncivil discourse they provoke, and explore how this varies in the context of the two countries considered. Our results suggest that while ideologically neutral bubble reachers support less uncivil discourse in Canada, the opposite relationship holds in Brazil. Even non-political content by ideologically neutral bubble reachers elicits a considerable amount of uncivil discourse in Brazil. This indicates that bubble reaching and incivility are moderated by the national political context. Our results complicate the simple hypothesis of a universal impact of neutral bubble reachers across contexts.