Explicit versus Implicit Incivility: Investigating Deliberative Attributes, Self-identity, and Potential Moderating Roles of Mass Democracy Protests in Hong Kong

The formulation of informal political discussions is largely premised on people’s expectations for idealistic democratic deliberation. It raises concerns scholars’ worries about the diffusion of incivility may harm the deliberative quality. By proposing implicit incivility, this study validated that explicit incivility is a vital impediment to effective deliberative conversations, while implicit incivility as rhetoric may arouse people’s enthusiasm for online deliberation instead. A comparison of the role of self-identity expressions on uncivil behaviors depicted that individual identity expressions are likely to prompt online incivility, whereas the collective self may inhibit their uncivil discourses. Examining the moderation effects of different protests provides insights into how social norms of movements may fluctuate with the relationship between deliberative content or identity expressions and two forms of incivility.