INCIVILITY IN 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS AND POSTS THAT CITE THEM

This chapter explores the presence of incivility via name-calling and vulgarity in 2020 presidential primary candidate tweets and the quote tweets reacting to them. Between August 1, 2019 and August 31, 2020, four Republican and 29 Democratic presidential primary candidates made 78,149 tweets, and incivility was not uncommon. Name-calling (8.9%) took place more than often vulgarity did (2.1%) in candidate tweets. Party and candidate differences in the use of incivility were detected. Republicans were more likely to name-call and use vulgarity than Democrats were. While Trump was a notable contributor to name-calling, he was not the sole Republican contributor to it, and he rarely used language identified as vulgar. Public reactions to candidate tweets were more likely to contain incivility than candidate tweets were. The presence of incivility in quote tweets was associated with the presence of incivility in the candidate tweets, suggesting that political candidates have the power to shape how members of the public choose to express themselves.