Incivility In Social Media Language

Abstract

Incivility is currently invading social media, giving rise to deterioration in language used within the virtual world. This paper aims to shed light on the effects of this phenomenon on the language used in social media with its different aspects: social, political, and psychological. For this sake, we shall critically review and analyze the literature on this topic, and deduce some conclusions about the reasons for incivility in social media language and its impacts on people’s thoughts and attitudes. The findings show that incivility is not only related to media users’ personalities but may have roots in their social and cultural environments, in addition to people’s perceptions of what is civil or uncivil.