The Incivility of Trolls and the “Nasty Effect”

Those trolls fishing for your outrage in the comments section of the news story you are reading may not be as crazy as you think. Okay, most of them don’t know the difference between name-calling and a reasoned argument but they may have something clever up their sleeve.

Recently published research out of the University of Wisconsin, Madison found that the comments section of online science news stories can distort what readers believe is being reported.

And oddly, according to the professors of science communications who conducted the research “it's not the content (of the comment) that matters. It's the tone.”

Brossard and Scheufele identified what they call the "the nasty effect." Participants were asked to read a blog post about the potential risks and benefits of the new technology. Half the group read civil comments while the other half was exposed to rude comments such as "if you don't see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these kinds of products, you are an idiot.”

The researchers found that reading uncivil comments not only polarized readers it changes their understanding of the news story. Even more serious, ad hominem attacks in the comment section makes readers think the downside of a technology in a science news report is greater than they previously believed.

As the researchers put it: "The Internet has the potential to foster discussion and deliberation among far-reaching audiences in spaces such as the comments section of news items and blog posts. However, such discussions are not always rational. Discussions on the Internet can take an uncivil route, with offensive comments or replies impeding the democratic ideal of healthy, heated discussion." 

They conclude: "Much in the same way that watching uncivil politicians argue on television causes polarization among individuals, impolite and incensed blog comments can polarize online users based on value predispositions utilized as heuristics when processing the blog’s information." 

I'm not sure what we can do to prevent these trolls from polarizing issues, misleading readers and polluting public conversations. I've never felt debating them helped – ignoring them, perhaps – but this research seems bound to encourage them, especially the trolls working for the oil and gas industry.

So what to do? Maybe there's a lesson here for all of us, perhaps especially those of us working in the environmental community. When I showed my wife an article on the research in Sunday's New York Times she said, “so don't be nasty, people shut down and stop listening.”

And she's right. Actually, the logic of the research reminds me of a deeper point, something the renowned Buddhist master and human rights activist Thich Nhat Hanh once told me: "speak the truth but not to punish."