Since the start of the Obama administration in 2009, members of Congress in America have been less civil on the social networking site Twitter, a study in Social Psychological and Personality Science has found.
The test examined 1.3 million tweets by members of Congress.
The researchers observed a 23 percent increase in incivility over a decade on the social networking platform.
“Further analyses suggest that the rise was partly driven by reinforcement learning in which politicians engaged in greater incivility following positive feedback,” the authors explained.
“Our research suggests that the average person’s view of uncivil tweets is very different—likely much more negative—than what might be gleaned from the ‘likes’ count,” according to the study’s authors.
“We conclude by discussing how the structure of social media platforms might facilitate this incivility-reinforcing dynamic between politicians and their followers.”
