I recently had an unpleasant exchange on Facebook.
On an otherwise productive Sunday afternoon, I was perusing my facebook feed when I ran into the comment you can see in the screen shot. As someone who considers herself to be pretty rational (most of the time anyway. For evidence otherwise see: that time in class when we talked about dead bodies on the news), I immediately knew that any anger towards the facebook "friend" or craving for informational justice would not be satisfied by engaging her in a discussion. I had evidence of this after reading the Kushin and Yamamoto piece on Friday. Their results clearly stated that online expression, such as the types of dialogues that take place in various social media frameworks, were related to situational political involvement but not to political self-efficacy. They cited incivility as a reason online exchanges might often be unsatisfying.
I realize that the evidence I am bringing forth to support their argument is merely anecdotal and is not representative of any solid sample size.
However, my intention at the onset of this brief and discouraging encounter was not to bolster their findings, but to perhaps change the status quo. Could I encourage this "friend" to seek some information and maybe retract a controversial statement? As you can see, I didn't succeed, but one could argue that I could have taken a different approach. Perhaps I could have been a little nicer or a little more encouraging.
Are most political debates that take place on social media platforms doomed to incivility? Is this a problem that's unique to a generation? What would you have done differently in dealing with my facebook "friend"?