ABSTRACT

Despite the excellent research on incivility in social spaces, it is unclear if this pattern of meanness holds true in more personal communication such as email. Drawing on an original sample of 2,509 e-mails sent to Florida Governor Jeb Bush in response to his efforts to reinsert the hydration and nutrition tubes of Terri Schiavo, we analyze how individuals differentially use (in)civility and emotional expression in their claimsmaking. We find that emails sent to Bush about the Schiavo case are largely polite, even when individuals’ disagreed with Bush's intervention on Terri's behalf. At the same time, we find a lot of emotional expression in the emails, and that the first emotional expression typically was negative. In order to better understand the relationship between (in)civility and emotion, we qualitatively analyze the 383 emails containing incivility, and find that individuals directed their negative emotional expressions at different targets. Additionally, we see different patterns in how negative emotional expressions are paired with uncivil communication according to the target. Emailers expressing negative emotions and incivility at Bush largely criticize him for violating individual rights, and, nearly half, blast him for prioritizing the Schiavo case over other problems facing the state. In contrast, emailers using uncivil language and negative emotional expressions at Terri's husband and a prominent judge try to persuade Bush to hold one or both of these men accountable for Terri's death. We conclude the paper by underscoring the utility in analytically distinguishing emotional expression from (in)civility.

摘要

尽管对社交空间中的不活跃性进行了出色的研究，但尚不清楚这种卑鄙的模式是否适用于更多的个人通信，例如电子邮件。根据发送给佛罗里达州州长杰布·布什（Jeb Bush）的2509封电子邮件的原始样本，以响应他为重新插入Terri Schiavo的水合和营养管所做的努力，我们分析了个人在主张时如何不同程度地使用文明和情感表达。我们发现，即使个人不同意布什代表特里的干预，发送给布什的有关Schiavo案的电子邮件在很大程度上也是礼貌的。同时，我们在电子邮件中发现了很多情感表达，并且第一个情感表达通常是负面的。为了更好地理解文明与情感之间的关系，我们定性分析了383封包含不文明行为的电子邮件，发现个人将其负面情绪表达指向了不同的目标。此外，我们在根据目标将消极的情绪表达与不文明的交流相结合方面看到了不同的模式。对布什表示消极情绪和inc弱的电子邮件发件人在很大程度上批评他侵犯了个人权利，并且近一半的人抨击布什将斯基亚沃案优先于该州面临的其他问题。相比之下，电子邮件发送者对特里的丈夫和一位杰出的法官使用不文明的语言和负面的情感表达，试图说服布什对这两个人中的一个或两个负责。我们通过强调在分析区分情感表达与文明中的效用来结束本文。