Online (In)Civility

There are challenges to online civility that must be identified before they may be addressed. This chapter will detail and critically examine forms of online incivility by exploring some of the ways in which technologically mediated engagement strains the usual social mores and instead encourages epistemic vices and fosters incivility. The chapter shall commence with an exploration of how online technologies use algorithmically generated timelines and newsfeeds designed to delight or disgust, creating an affective political economy that fosters political polarization and hostile disagreement. The chapter will focus on how the online environment effects the experiences of children and young people in particular, in terms of the way they are exposed to incivility on social media sites and public news forums. After acknowledging this structural context, the chapter will consider potential individual responses to social media, which may include epistemic as well as moral vices and virtues. Finally, the chapter will consider whether one of the barriers to civility, in the form of particular epistemic vices that are reinforced online, might be overcome. The chapter is interested in the educative role for inculcating epistemic virtues that instead support civil online engagement.