Examples Of Online Incivility

Incivility comes in different forms. It is seen everywhere, such as places in politics, in public, or online. This poses a question of how important incivility is and how it affects the people who encounter incivility. Online incivility specifically brings up different perspectives if online incivility should be tamed or be left alone. Cornell Clayton, discusses in his article “Understand the ‘Civility Crisis’” that there are five reasons why there is online incivility. They include the public contributing to social media, topics being popular and profitable, it depends on time and place, there are groups that are being excluded, and political issues; however, Clayton takes the position that online incivility is not an issue and should be
Boyd challenges Zhuo because she argues that there should still be anonymity while Zhuo disagrees that anonymity should be stopped. Both authors find their own position of online incivility is an invasion of privacy. Zhuo argues that anonymity invades people’s privacy through trolling. She includes a case of Nicole Catsouras who died in a car accident, then anonymous trolls “set up fake tribute pages” and even sent pictures to her parents with the subject titled “‘Hey, Daddy, I’m still alive’” (para 5). The online trolls not only invades the girl’s privacy, but also her parents as well. Boyd challenges when she adds a woman’s experience of using real names resulted in her coworkers invading her privacy or people track her from being online (para. 2). Because the woman had her named revealed online, Boyd argues that real names put her safety in danger, which counters Zhuo’s
Online incivility is too large of a problem to get rid of but it also need in order for democracy to evolve. After reading Clayton’s article, if it was not for the women who stood up for their suffrage rights and kept quiet about this issue, there would not have been changes in the future to allow women to vote. Incivility is a way for smaller groups to finally be heard and democracy is broaden by changing. Although incivility is able to help democracy and make a change, online incivility regarding people “trolling” does not help democracy because it does not contribute how democracy can improve, therefore; online incivility should be