This article takes up the popular argument that much online discussion is toxic and hence harmful to democracy, and argues that the pervasiveness of incivility is not incompatible with democratically relevant political talk. Instead of focusing on the tone of political talk, scholars interested in understanding the extent to which digital platforms threaten democratic values should focus on expressions of intolerance. I demonstrate the validity of this conceptual model by investigating the discursive and contextual features associated with incivility and intolerance online in the context of public comments in two different platforms—news websites and Facebook. Results show that incivility and intolerance occur in meaningfully different discussion settings. Whereas incivility is associated with features that reveal meaningful discursive engagement, such as justified opinion expression and engagement with disagreement, intolerance is likely to occur in homogeneous discussions about minorities and civil society—exactly when it can hurt democracy the most.

本文采用了一种流行的论点，即许多在线讨论有毒，因此有损于民主，并辩称，不活跃的普遍性与与民主相关的政治言论并不矛盾。有兴趣了解数字平台对民主价值观的威胁程度的学者应该关注不宽容的表达，而不是只关注政治言论的基调。我通过在两个不同的平台（新闻网站和Facebook）中，在公众意见的背景下调查与在线不文明和不宽容相关的话语和上下文特征，从而证明了这种概念模型的有效性。结果表明，在有意义的不同讨论环境中会出现不友好和不宽容的情况。隐性与揭示有意义的话语参与的功能相关，