What Factors Drive ‘Toxic’ Counter-Normative Commenting in Online Communities

The next speaker in this ICA 2024 conference session is Seo Yoon Lee, whose interest is in toxic communicative behaviours, and especially counter-normative opinion expression in online communities. Such community dissidents are often understood as online trolls seeking to introduce community chaos, but this behaviour can be seen as both toxic or constructive: it is toxic if it is done simply to disrupt and aggravate, but constructive if it genuinely seeks to highlight alternative views.

The present study explores this in the context of the polarised issue of climate change. Here, social identity theory points to the existence of in-group favouritism and out-group bias, and might explain counter-normative opinion expression within out-group communities. Conversely, ‘dark’ personalities may also explain such expression if individuals enjoy disrupting even social in-group communities.

Seo Yoon conducted a between-subject online experiment with Democrat- and Republican-identifying Mechanical Turk participants in the US, who were then assigned either to in- or out-group communities relating to their partisan identities where carbon tax policies were being discussed. They were then asked about their willingness to express a counter-normative idea within that community.

Participants were significantly more willing to express a counter-normative opinion in a social out-group; conversely only participants with sadist personality traits were also significantly willing to express a counter-normative opinion against their own in-group. The first might be seen as ‘toxic’ activities, yet for constructive motivations, while the second is genuinely toxic and done out of a motivation to disrupt.