The Impact of Synchronicity and Civility in Online Political Discussions on Perceptions and Intentions to Participate

The Impact of Synchronicity and Civility in Online Political Discussions on Perceptions and Intentions to Participate

Elaine W. J. Ng
Benjamin H. Detenber
School of Communication & Information
Nanyang Technological University

Using a mixed-model factorial design, a laboratory experiment (n=153) was conducted to investigate the effects of two features of CMC-synchronicity and civility-on perceptions of online political discussions and discussants. Results indicate that the synchronous versions of the discussions were perceived as more informative and persuasive than the asynchronous versions. Discussants in the uncivil versions of the discussions were perceived as more dominant and less credible. However, neither synchronicity nor civility had a significant impact on people's intentions to participate. The results stand in contrast to those of previous content analysis research, suggesting the importance of studying perceptions in future research. The implications of the findings for online political communication are discussed.

The advent of the Internet has fundamentally altered human communication. In particular, the Internet has made computer-mediated communication (CMC) prevalent-so much so that it now pervades many aspects of human interactions. CMC has been studied primarily in the context of interpersonal relationships and organizations, but recently its role in political communication has been investigated. Political discussions on the Internet offer a rich area for analysis as the numbers of political discussion forums, newsgroups, and chat rooms have proliferated over the past few years. Many researchers believe the Internet has the potential to enrich democratic processes and increase political participation and deliberation if it is appropriately utilized (Agre, 2002; Dahlberg, 2001; Dahlgren, 2001; Levin, 2002; Papacharissi, 2002; Savigny, 2002; Scheufele & Nisbet, 2002; Sparks, 2001). However, certain attributes of online political discussions may also dissuade people from participating.

Unlike previous studies of political communication on the Internet, which examine discussions through content analysis methods, this study uses an experimental design and focuses on two of the formal elements of communication-synchronicity and civility. Both synchronicity and civility can be considered formal features in CMC because they vary independently of the content of the discussions. Synchronicity, or the degree to which online interactions take place in real-time, is one form of chronemics, or a temporal attribute of online messages. The choice of when to communicate is different in CMC compared with face-to-face (FTF) interactions, and there are social consequences of such temporal choices (Walther, 2002). In the context of CMC, the difference between synchronous and asynchronous interactions (i.e., chat vs. discussion boards or forums) seems quite significant, yet little empirical research has been done on this distinction despite Walther's (1994) suggestion to do so. For example, although we know that the content of online political discussions varies with whether the exchanges are synchronous or not (Hill & Hughes, 1998), we do not know the impact this temporal difference has on perceptions. In contrast, some research has been done on varying degrees of asynchronous CMC interactions, and it appears that the duration or lag between e-mail messages can affect perceptions of intimacy and dominance of the sender (Walther & Tidwell, 1995), and impression development (Liu, Ginther, & Zelhart, 2001). However, the impact of these temporal message attributes has not been investigated in the context of political communication. Given these findings and lacunae, comparing different levels of asynchronous communication as well as asynchronous versus synchronous communication can help further delineate chronemic effects.

Civility constitutes an important part of social interaction. It is seen as an appropriate form of behavior in political communication, and necessary for encouraging deliberative political discussions (Dutton, 1996; Johnson & Johnson, 2000). Unfortunately, in cyberspace uncivil behavior and ad hominem attacks (also known as "flaming") are widespread in political discussions (Hill & Hughes, 1997, 1998; Papacharissi, 2002, 2004). The lack of civility online could possibly discourage participation and affect people's perceptions and motivations for future participation.

Past research indicates that the majority of people who visit chat rooms or discussion boards silently read the online conversations of a vociferous few on a regular basis (Hill & Hughes, 1997; Light & Rogers, 1999; Papacharissi, 2002; Ranerup, 2003). This behavior, called "lurking," is an important step toward participating in an online discussion. Mutz, Reeves, and Wise (2002) suggest that people have greater willingness to eavesdrop on others' conversations rather than participate, at least initially, when the views expressed run counter to their own. The initial impressions that these lurkers form are likely to influence their inclination to participate in future discussions, and we believe that, beyond the content, formal attributes of the interactions will affect these impressions. Therefore, in this study we aim to achieve a better understanding of online political discussions by examining the impact that civility and synchronicity have on people's perceptions of online political discussions, the discussants, and their intentions to participate.

The Internet provides people with a public forum to engage in political conversation and argument; a form of communication some people either cannot engage in or find in their daily lives (Stromer-Galley, 2003). Much of the previous empirical research on political participation in cyberspace has centered on the application and effects of communication technology on the political process (Groper, 1996). More recent studies focus on how citizens perceive and use online discussion forums and their motivations for discussing politics online (Light & Rogers, 1999; Stromer-Galley, 2002). It is not what the Internet can do to people; rather, it is what people hope to get out of the Internet that motivates political discussions online.

Most people agree that civil political discourse is necessary for encouraging greater participation in political discussions online. Civility is an essential function of society (Billante & Saunders, 2002), and it is also highly emphasized in the world of politics as the lack of civility drives people away from participating in political discourse (Papacharissi, 2004). However, the absence of cues and the physical isolation in CMC are conditions that encourage flaming or uncivil behavior in online political discourses (Dutton, 1996; Hill & Hughes, 1997, 1998; Papacharissi, 2002). The Social Identity and DE-individuation (SIDE) theory (Postmes, Spears, & Lea, 1998; Spears & Lea, 1992) provides a social influence explanation of flaming. The SIDE theory emphasizes the importance of social context in CMC, in contrast to the reduced social cues perspective (Culnan & Markus, 1987; Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire, 1984) which states that interaction mediated by CMC filters out important non-verbal communicative cues. According to the SIDE theory, it is precisely because of the lack of social cues that people may only have their social or personal standards to go by in CMC. Due to the favorable conditions that CMC affords (anonymity, isolation, and reduced interpersonal cues), people may find it easier to issue unpleasant or unpopular decisions as they are divorced from the human consequences of their actions (Spears & Lea, 1994). Kayany (1998) provides an example of how social norms can explain flaming in the political context in CMC. In his analysis of messages posted to four social Usenet newsgroups, he found that the largest proportion of flames in each group occurred in a political context. This suggests that incivility in online political discussions is a source of concern since flaming seems to be a more salient group norm in the online political context as compared to other forms of communication online.

Despite the anonymous conditions and the presence of flaming in CMC, more recent CMC theories argue against the impersonal nature of CMC put forth by previous theories. For example, the hyperpersonal communication model (Walther, 1996) explains how CMC users can form impressions that sometimes surpass the level of affection and emotion experienced in FTF interactions. A hyperpersonal relationship is formed through a combination of three different but related elements of the communication process: 1) CMC receivers' idealization of their conversation partners through an "over-attribution" process results in them forming magnified positive impressions of their partners; 2) CMC senders' "selective self-presentation," in which the sender can manage his messages before communicating; 3) feedback processes, whereby the combination of idealized receiver perception and optimized sender self-presentation result in an intensification loop. The hyperpersonal perspective found support in Tidwell and Walther's (2002) study of how communication channel-CMC or FTF-influences communication behaviors, methods of forming acquaintances, processes of forming attributions, and ways of relating to one another in initial interactions. Their findings indicate that due to the lack of most nonverbal cues, CMC interactants employed a greater proportion of more direct uncertainty reduction strategies, compared with FTF participants. An important conclusion is that when people want to get to know one another, they will do so by overcoming the limitations of the medium.

There are also suggestions that past research, which supported the cues-filtered-out approach, placed time constraints on the exchange of messages in both CMC and FTF communication. Walther's (1992) alternative approach, known as the Social Information Processing (SIP) Theory, suggests that it simply takes a longer time for messages to be exchanged in CMC channels and that with sufficient passage of time and message exchanges, the development of relationships in CMC would be similar to FTF. In particular, SIP Theory calls for the closer examination of nonverbal cues in CMC interactions, such as synchronicity, which could have a profound effect on how communicators form perceptions.

According to Burgoon and Saine (1978), chronemics refers to a non-verbal cue system that affects how we perceive and react to the temporal aspects of messages. In CMC, chronemics exist alongside other nonverbal cues such as gender and group composition (Dennis & Kinney, 1999; Savicki & Kelley, 2000) or paralinguistic cues (Lea & Spears, 1992). Walther and Tidwell (1995) suggest that there are normative standards regarding the time of day in which certain topics are discussed and regarding the latencies communicators employ in responding to others. By varying one's conformity to or violation of these norms, CMC users are employing chronemics as a nonverbal cue system, which can have implications for the types of perceptions formed by users in both social and task-related discussions. Their study revealed that chronemic codes had a significant impact on subjects' interpretations of senders' intimacy/liking and dominance/submissiveness. In interpersonal communication, time allocation and the timing and coordination of behaviors can also affect the quality of relationships (Warner, 1991). In a CMC context where social cues may be limited, temporal cues or chronemics may be especially influential in shaping impressions.

In CMC, variations in synchronicity are a kind of chronemic code that can influence people's perceptions of online communication behavior independent of the content of the discussions. However, synchronicity has typically been examined only in terms of synchronous versus asynchronous interactions, and using content analytic techniques (e.g., Hill & Hughes, 1998). Instead of examining the content of synchronous versus asynchronous discussions, the present study, by using a controlled experiment and manipulating the level of synchronicity, makes inferences about the influence of synchronicity on the perceptions people have of political discussions and their intentions to participate in them. In order to understand the concept of synchronicity further, synchronicity is split into three levels (i.e., synchronous, asynchronous quick, and asynchronous slow). To our knowledge, this is the first time an experiment of this sort has been done in the context of online political communication.

The essential functions of political discussions are to provide information and to persuade, factors that are key to ensuring greater deliberativeness in discussions. Past research indicates that asynchronous communication seems to have greater potential for more detailed and deliberative discussions, since its interactions are slower and more thoughtful (Lapadat, 2002). Hill and Hughes (1998) examined both the amount of informativeness and persuasiveness of the content in Usenet and AOL discussion groups. Their findings revealed that Usenet was more informative than chat. Over 60% of Usenet threads contained some form of verifiable information while only 13% of chat room threads provided such content. The authors inferred that the short line space and the fast pace of chat rooms required people to make snap comments, not thoughtful ones, hence leading to a low level of information and a small amount of issue discussion. However, it is unclear if asynchronous communication will be perceived as more informative because people have expectations of it being more deliberative than synchronous communication. Because of prior expectations, asynchronous discussions could be perceived as more informative as the asynchronous mode of communication allows for more time to construct messages.

Hypothesis 1a: Discussions in the asynchronous conditions will be perceived by subjects as more informative.

Hill and Hughes (1998) also found that flaming is less common when information is provided. In their study, they found that only 38% of flames contained verifiable information, while over 61% of non-flames provided information. These findings seem to suggest that when people are polite, they provide more information. There are also suggestions that when people flame others in online discussions, they tend to draw attention to the impoliteness of the messages. The result could be that message receivers are then put off by the incivility and thus perceive the discussion to be less informative. Therefore, it seems logical to predict that people will perceive discussions that are polite as more informative than discussions that are polite. To get a clearer picture of the relationship between civility and informativeness, civility will be manipulated while the content of the discussions is held constant.

Hypothesis 1b: When discussions are uncivil, perceived informativeness decreases.

Persuasion is a dynamic process often found in human communication. People can be persuaded through both verbal and nonverbal means (O'Donnell & Kable, 1982) and variations in the medium of communication can affect persuasion (O'Keefe, 1990). For instance, asynchronous communication could allow for greater deliberation in discourse without the urgency to respond in real time, and hence provide conversation partners more opportunities for persuading one another or more time to develop counter-arguments. Conversely, the more interactive nature of chat could make conversation partners more easily persuaded as people feel a greater sense of involvement in the conversation. It seems likely that the use of civility will also affect persuasion. For example, Whaley (1997) found that the perceived impolite nature of rebuttal phrases may actually work against persuasive goals. In addition, studies by Holtgraves (1997) reveal that people have significant memory for the wording used to convey politeness. These studies suggest that people have more positive evaluations of, and better memory for, civil behavior as compared to uncivil behavior. From this it can be inferred that uncivil discussions could be perceived as less persuasive (i.e., people have poorer memory for impolite messages, and are therefore less likely to be persuaded). To date, no research has been conducted or theory proposed concerning synchronicity's impact on persuasion. Therefore, we present the following research questions.

Research Question 1: Will discussions in the synchronous condition or asynchronous conditions be perceived as more persuasive?

Research Question 2: Will discussions that are civil or uncivil be perceived as more persuasive?

People's perceptions of online political discussants add another dimension to understanding political attitudes among the citizenry, in addition to their perceptions of the discussions. How people perceive political discussants can influence their political affiliations and their affinity towards participating in political discussions, as well as their tendency towards other forms of political participation. Scheufele and Shah (2000) examined the processes through which social capital is maintained and found that a decline in social trust is linked to a decrease in civic engagement. Their findings suggest that an individual's personality strength, an amalgam of self-confidence and opinion leadership, has a stronger influence on political participation than more traditional considerations like interest and knowledge in politics. Understanding how people perceive their conversation partners in online political discussions could aid in encouraging greater political participation online. The potential that the Internet has for facilitating more unrestricted discussions may be especially important in societies where citizens have limited opportunities to participate in politics.

This study also examines how the manipulations of synchronicity and civility will influence people's perceptions of the degree of dominance (as opposed to equality) and credibility of the speakers in the political discussions. According to Burgoon et al. (1989), dominance is one of the primary dimensions that characterize interpersonal relationships. Walther and Tidwell (1995) suggest that variations in chronemics are an element of interaction control that may be used to enhance or reduce the degree of relational dominance or equality among communicators. They found that with task-oriented messages, a fast reply indicated less dominance while a slow reply conveyed greater dominance. Although political discussions are not considered task-oriented messages, they are hypothesized to influence perceptions in the same way as task-oriented messages. These findings lead to the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2a: Discussants in the asynchronous slow condition will be perceived as more dominant than those in the other two conditions.

In organizational settings, the extent of politeness in linguistic behaviors is a reflection of the distribution of power. Morand's (1996) study affirms that politeness behaviors are sensitive to the distribution of formal authority in organizations and that the exercise of politeness is integral to the regulation of status-related interaction. When superiors use politeness, they come across as friendlier and less dominant towards their subordinates, suggesting that uncivil behavior conveys a greater sense of dominance as compared to civil behavior.

Hypothesis 2b: Discussants in the uncivil condition will be perceived as more dominant than those in the civil condition.

Credibility of political discussants is important for the proper functioning of a deliberative political discussion. Information found on the Internet often comes from dubious sources, which can be difficult to verify, so participants in online discussions may be more skeptical of it. This skepticism is evident in many online forums. Aware of the possibilities of fraud, participants often challenge any claims and supporting information that are not convincingly substantiated (Dahlberg, 2001). To add to the uncertainty, incivility in the content of online discussions could further reduce the credibility of communicators. Prior research suggests that individuals who are less civil will be perceived by others more negatively than those who are more civil. This could, in turn, have implications for the credibility of communicators. For example, in a study examining the effect of the politeness of an email message on how the sender of that message was perceived by the recipient, Jessmer and Anderson (2001) found that senders of polite email messages were perceived by their receivers as friendlier, more competent, and more likable. This suggests that incivility may be used to mask a lack of factual knowledge, and therefore discussants that are civil would probably be perceived as more credible. As credibility is best established through a thoughtful discussion, it appears more difficult for synchronous communication to accomplish this purpose since there is a sense of urgency present within synchronous communication where not much time is allowed for careful reflection and construction of messages (Dahlberg, 2001). In synchronous communication, such as chat conversations, those who delay in their responses could also be evaluated less favorably by their conversation partners.

Hypothesis 3a: When discussions are uncivil, credibility of the discussants decreases.

Hypothesis 3b: Discussants in the asynchronous conditions will be perceived as more credible than those in the synchronous condition.

In past research, participation in a deliberative forum has rarely been treated as a dependent variable. However, in their investigation of the effects of discussion network characteristics, McLeod et al. (1999) found that network heterogeneity (the extent to which individuals are exposed to conflicting opinions) positively influences forum participation. Other studies suggest that incivility is an impediment to deliberative political discussions (Dutton, 1996; Johnson & Johnson, 2000) and that asynchronous communication is the better channel for online political discussions (Lapadat, 2002). Based on the previous hypotheses predicting informativeness and persuasiveness, and the suggestions from the literature, it can be inferred that civility and synchronicity could influence people's intentions to participate in online political discussions. Although intentions to participate do not always accurately reflect actual participation, there is generally a strong positive relationship between intentions and behavior (Ajzen, 1991).

Hypothesis 4a: Subjects will express greater willingness to participate in asynchronous discussions than in synchronous discussions.

Hypothesis 4b: Subjects will express greater willingness to participate in discussions that are civil than discussions that are uncivil.

The perceptions discussed above are likely to be related to other perceptions, which should be controlled to get a clearer picture of the impact of the independent variables. For example, the extent of issue salience, or how important one perceives an issue to be concerned with oneself, might influence one's past experience with and perceptions of political discussions and discussants. Nadeau, Niemi, and Amato (1995) found that when people think that a political issue is prominent, it stimulates their learning about it. Similarly, political efficacy, which is thought to be an indicator of the overall health of democratic systems (Craig, Niemi, & Silver, 1990), is likely to affect perceptions and behavioral intentions, so both will also be used as control measure.

The study had a 3 (synchronous versus asynchronous quick versus asynchronous slow) X 2 (polite messages versus impolite messages) X 2 (issues) mixed-model design, with issue being a within-subject factor and synchronicity and civility manipulated among subjects. To avoid sensitization to the treatments, subjects remained in a single civility X synchronicity condition throughout. The presentation order of issues was counterbalanced across conditions.

A total of 153 undergraduates from a local university participated in this study (age M=20, SD=1.30) Seventy percent of the participants were women (n=105), reflecting the composition of the school. Subjects were offered a $10 incentive each for participating. Only Singaporeans were allowed to participate so as to avoid possible confounds brought about by non-Singaporeans' unfamiliarity with local political issues. The number and gender of participants were balanced across conditions.

The stimuli consisted of two discussion threads taken from an existing online forum: one on the topic of the water dispute between Singapore and Malaysia, and the other on the topic of sending Singapore National Servicemen (troops) to Iraq. Both discussions took place on a Yahoo Groups forum in 2003 and each discussion was about 10 to 12 postings long.

The gender of the interactants in the discussions was indicated by the usernames and was held constant throughout the experiment. The two primary interactants were male and the secondary interactants were female. Thus, a mixed gender discussion was presented in all experimental conditions.

To create the synchronous condition, the original discussions were broken up into smaller conversation units so that they resembled online chat sessions (a program was written to display comments sequentially, and make it look as though people were "chatting" in real time). See Appendix A for a sample of the stimulus materials. Care was taken to keep the content of the discussions as constant as possible across conditions and to maintain a high degree of ecological validity. The asynchronous quick and asynchronous slow conditions both maintained the format of the original discussion forum. The asynchronous quick condition had messages with time stamps within an interval of not more than 24 hours, while the asynchronous slow condition had messages with time stamps that have an interval greater than 24 hours. The specific posting time of the original time stamps of the messages were maintained so long as they met the above criteria and were modified accordingly when they did not.

Civility had two levels-polite and impolite. Rude comments, name-calling, and personal attacks were interjected in the impolite condition. If the original discussions contained impolite phrases, they were kept for the uncivil condition but were modified to reflect greater politeness for the civil condition. Similarly, if the discussions contained polite phrases, they were kept for the civil condition while impolite comments were inserted for the uncivil condition.

The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, participants were required to fill in pencil-and-paper questionnaires containing assessments of the salience of the two issues of discussion, perceptions of self- and political-efficacy, demographic information, and their Internet usage patterns. Participants were then instructed to come back for the experiment on a specified day approximately one week following the pretest.

The experiment was carried out in 14 sessions with individuals randomly assigned to conditions and run in small groups (3-15 people). Upon arriving at the research facility, participants were briefed and instructed not to talk to each other. The task was completed between 20 to 35 minutes for the asynchronous conditions and between 30 to 45 minutes for the synchronous conditions. The average time difference between the completion of the two tasks was due to how the chat discussions were paced. Chat discussions were geared towards an average reading time to allow all subjects to be able to read everything, while the reading of the forum discussions was self-paced. Some subjects read the forum discussions rather quickly, therefore bringing down the average reading time of the forums.

Participants were given verbal, as well as written, experimental instructions describing their role as a lurker in their respective discussion forums or chat rooms. They were told that they were not allowed to contribute messages at the time of the study but were only supposed to read and review the discussions. Participants used a web browser to view the stimulus materials and were told that they were looking at a screen capture. Participants in the synchronous condition watched a chat conversation unfolding after they were given instructions to log in. Those in the asynchronous conditions read messages posted on a discussion forum. Evaluations of the discussions as well as one interactant in each condition were made via a pencil-and-paper questionnaire after reading each of the two discussions. Incentives were paid at the end of each session.

The dependent variables consisted of evaluations of the discussion, evaluations of one individual in the discussion, subjects' willingness to participate in the discussions, and their motivations for participating. Specifically, perceptions of the informativeness and persuasiveness of the discussions were assessed, as were the dominance and credibility of the primary interactant. The composite measures for willingness to participate, informativeness and persuasiveness were based upon suggestions from the literature but were essentially new (i.e., created for this study; see Appendix B for the detailed list of measurements). The composite measure for dominance contained four items adapted from Burgoon and Hale's (1987) Relational Communication Questionnaire. All of these measures used 7-interval, Likert-type scales. McCroskey's 12-Item Source Credibility Scale (1966, cited in Rubin, Palmgreen, & Sypher, 1994) was used to assess two different sub-dimensions of credibility: authoritativeness and character.

Salience of the two issues in the discussions was assessed using items from Zaichkowsky's (1985) Personal Involvement Inventory and measured on 7-interval semantic differential scales. The composite measures for self- and political-efficacy were modified based on Craig et al.'s (1990) Political Efficacy and Political Trust scales and measured on Likert-type, 5-interval scales.

Pretesting was done to check the synchronicity and civility manipulations and to assess the reliability of the new measures (n=91). Results indicate that the composite measures created to measure the informativeness and persuasiveness of the discussions and measures for dominance and credibility, as well as willingness to participate, have good reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.82, and above). Some items from the composite measures were dropped when they did not contribute to the internal consistency of the measures (noted in Appendix B).

Manipulation checks revealed that discussions in the high civility condition were perceived as significantly more polite than those in the low civility condition for both the water issue (t(87)=14.13, p<.001) and the National Servicemen (NS) issue (t(89)=5.43, p<.001). Discussions in the asynchronous quick condition were perceived as significantly quicker than discussions in the asynchronous slow condition for both the water issue (t(87)=2.02, p<.05) and the NS issue (t(89)=3.51, p<.01); refer to Table 1).

Table 1. Means for manipulation checks done at pretest

Similar to the pretest results, the composite measures created had good reliability, (Cronbach's alpha = 0.81, and above). Correlation analyses were run to determine which control measures were significantly related to the dependent variables, and would be used as covariates in subsequent analyses (see Table 2 for the correlation matrix).

Table 2. Correlation matrix (Pearson's r) between dependent variables and covariates
Note: **p<0.01 level (2-tailed). *p<0.05 level (2-tailed). Motivation variables are for Time 1.

The mixed-model ANCOVA1 produced a significant main effect of synchronicity on perceptions of informativeness, after controlling for political system efficacy and issue salience. However, the effect of civility on informativeness was not significant, nor did it interact with synchronicity. The effect of synchronicity was in the opposite direction from what the hypothesis predicted. That is, discussions in the synchronous condition were rated considerably more informative (M=3.87, SE=.10) than those in the asynchronous quick condition (M=3.42, SE=.10), or those in the asynchronous slow condition (M=3.47, SE=.10; F(2,145)=6.24, p<.01).

Multiple post hoc comparisons revealed that there were significant differences between the synchronous and asynchronous quick conditions and between the synchronous and asynchronous slow conditions. Since there was no significant difference between the two asynchronous conditions, they were combined-yielding two levels of synchronicity: synchronous and asynchronous-to be more parsimonious and to give a clearer picture of the relationship. ANCOVA produced a significant main effect of time on perceptions of informativeness (see Table 3). Discussions in the synchronous condition were rated as more informative (M = 3.87, SE = .10) than the same discussions in the asynchronous condition (M = 3.45, SE = .70; F (1, 147) = 12.45, p < .001). Therefore, neither H1a nor H1b is supported.

Table 3. ANCOVA tests, estimated marginal means for perceptions of discussions by issue and synchronicity controlling for two covariates
Note: n=153 (synchronous=52; asynchronous=101). Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

For the persuasiveness dependent variable, there were significant main effects of synchronicity but no significant effects of civility. Discussions in the synchronous condition were perceived as significantly more persuasive (M = 3.89, SE = .10) than the same discussions presented in the asynchronous quick condition (M = 3.45, SE = .10), or those in the asynchronous slow condition (M = 3.49, SE = .10; F (2, 145) = 6.27, p <.01), after controlling for political system efficacy and issue salience.

Multiple post hoc comparisons revealed that there were significant differences between the synchronous and asynchronous quick conditions and also between the synchronous and asynchronous slow conditions but there was no difference between the asynchronous quick and asynchronous slow conditions. Collapsing the two asynchronous conditions, ANCOVA also produced significant main effects of synchronicity on perceptions of persuasiveness. The synchronous discussions were rated as more persuasive (M = 3.89, SE = .10) than the same discussions presented in the asynchronous condition (M = 3.47, SE = .70), F (1, 147) = 12.62, p < .001; see Table 3). In answering Research Question 1, discussions in the synchronous condition were perceived as more persuasive than discussions in the asynchronous condition.

Discussants in the uncivil condition were perceived as significantly more dominant than those in the civil condition and this held true across all levels of synchronicity and for both issues (see Table 4). However, there was no effect of synchronicity on perceptions of dominance, so H2a is not supported. The ANOVA results revealed that the discussants in the impolite versions of the discussions received higher dominance ratings (M = 5.39, SE = .09) than did the discussants in the polite versions (M = 4.64, SE = .09; F (1, 147) = 35.71, p < .001). Therefore, H2b, which states that discussants in the uncivil condition will be perceived as more dominant than those in the civil condition, is supported.

Table 5. Estimated marginal means for source credibility (character) by issue and civility
Note: Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.

ANCOVA results showed that discussants in the civil condition were rated as more credible than those in the uncivil condition. For both issues, discussants were perceived as significantly more credible on the character dimension when discussions were polite, F (1, 145) = 43.16, p < .001, controlling for political system efficacy and issue salience (see Table 5). Hence, H3a, which predicted that when discussions are uncivil, credibility of the discussants decreases, is supported. However, these results were only significant in the composite variable assessing the character dimension of source credibility. They were insignificant for the authoritativeness dimension. No significant effects of synchronicity were found for source credibility. H3b is not supported.

Table 5. Estimated marginal means for source credibility (character) by issue and civility
Note: Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.

Neither synchronicity nor civility affected participants' intentions to participate. Hypotheses 4a and 4b are not supported.

The findings of this study show that manipulations of synchronicity and civility affected perceptions of online discussions but not people's intentions to participate in them. Although some of the effects may seem obvious (e.g., civility's influence on dominance and source credibility), others were counter-intuitive (e.g., the effect of synchronicity).

The analyses revealed that the impact of synchronicity is opposite of what the hypotheses predicted. That is, synchronous communication was perceived as more informative and persuasive than asynchronous communication. These findings run counter to past research, but can be explained by the different methods used; Hill and Hughes (1998) used content analytical methods to support their inferences, while this study used experimental methods to assess the impact on people's perceptions. Although the short line space and fast pace of chat were thought to inhibit the transmittal of information via synchronous communication in previous research, the greater extent of interactivity found in synchronous communication could have affected perceptions. Participants in the chat discussions could have felt a greater sense of involvement and hence perceived the synchronous conversations as more informative and persuasive in comparison to the more static and less interactive asynchronous discussions.

Another explanation for the reversed findings could be related to people's expectations about the different modes of CMC. If the findings of Hill and Hughes (1998) are accurate-that chat is less informative compared with discussion forums-then people's expectations of synchronous communication could be low and this in turn, might affect their perceptions of online chat discussions. That is, with low expectations of the quality of chat discussions in general, the synchronous versions of the discussions could have seemed quite informative and persuasive compared to the asynchronous discussions, where expectations are higher. This seems quite possible given that the discussion content used in the synchronous condition was modified based on the original conversations taken off asynchronous discussions, hence the synchronous discussions in this study could have appeared to participants as more informative and persuasive, when they compared them to their expectations of chat conversations.

Reflective of current social norms, findings suggest that incivility leads to more negative perceptions of online political discussants. That is, discussants in the uncivil conditions were perceived as aggressive and intimidating (more dominant) as well as unreliable (less credible). Results indicating that discussants in the uncivil condition were perceived as more dominant and less credible reinforce the notion that incivility does have negative consequences, at least as far as one's reputation goes in the context of political discussions. In addition, these findings support the SIDE theory, which posits that standard social norms become more salient in CMC despite the lack of social cues. It seems that social norms with regards to civility in FTF situations also apply to CMC conditions. In FTF situations, constructive civil debate is necessary so that parties can work together to resolve factual disagreements wherever possible (Burgess & Burgess, 1997). In CMC, where discussions are exchanged mainly through written text, the prevalence of civility could act as a stronger cue for interpersonal evaluations.

The inconsistency between perceptions of discussion and perceptions of discussant findings with regards to manipulations of civility could be due to participants' self perceptions. Perceptions of the informativeness and persuasiveness of the discussions were based on how participants rated the discussions as providing more information (i.e., high in informativeness) or having the ability to change their viewpoints (i.e., high in persuasiveness). That is, the participants' perceptions of their own abilities could be a mitigating factor in their evaluations of the discussions because of the subjective nature of the dependent measures (i.e., How informative were the discussions to you? How likely was the discussion to change your views?). For example, participants could have seen themselves as well-informed and not easily persuaded, or they did not wish to take a stand. Another explanatory factor could be that participants separated their perceptions of the whole discussion from perceptions of that one individual discussant that they were evaluating. That is, one's actions did not necessarily generalize to others or group interactions.

Another explanation for these findings could be due to the participants' interpretations of the civility attribute. Whether a message is considered uncivil or not varies from one person to the other. This is echoed by O'Sullivan and Flanagin (2003), who posit that people have varying perceptions of what constitutes incivility. Perhaps incivility was deemed more intolerable when participants were asked to rate the discussants as compared to rating the discussions, as they expected the discussants to exhibit greater civility towards one another. Also, there could be distinctions between merely impolite statements and statements that were thought to indicate harmful intentions. Postmes et al. (2000) suggest that such distinctions are made according to the context in which communication occurs. Participants could have expectations of online political discussions as being more uncivil than other online discussions and therefore could have higher tolerance of the uncivil discussions.

In this study, civility did not have any impact on perceptions of informativeness and persuasiveness of the discussions, contrary to suggestions that uncivil behavior online could have a negative influence on people's perceptions. Although one should not infer too much from a null finding, it is possible that uncivil behavior in the online political communication context may be less detrimental than previously thought.

Results did not indicate any significant impact of synchronicity and civility on intentions to participate. In this study, the form of the discussions was manipulated while content was held constant. It could be that people have to be relatively involved in the content of online discussions in order for the structural attributes to change their behavioral intentions. If there is a kind of involvement threshold, the participants in the study-university undergraduates who have not yet had much opportunity to participate in political activities (many have yet to reach legal voting age)-may not have been the best population to draw from. Although the people in the sample are heavy users of the Internet, their involvement in political activities is almost negligible. Assessments of political involvement showed that the percentage of people who reported having visited political websites or having taken part in more traditional forms of political activities such as providing feedback to government agencies is not large (22.2%). One implication is that more could be done to encourage young people to take part in online political discussions. Higher involvement, in turn, could lead to greater sensitivity to the nuances of the structural attributes of the discussions.

Past research indicates that lurkers are likely to behave in similar ways as regular discussants and could become regular contributors to the discussions in future. However, the lurkers in this study did not exhibit any significant intentions to participate in future discussions. This could be explained by the lack of identification and individuation in the discussions presented. That is, the lurkers were just supposed to read the exchanges by strangers with pseudonyms but could not identify with the discussants (cf., Burgoon et al., 2000). Similarly, the participants could have been experiencing only a low level of involvement in the discussions, and this may have been exacerbated by the design of the study. That is, the participants were directed to read the discussions; they did not seek them out on their own. Perhaps people have to find discussions on their own and be regular lurkers in a particular discussion for a period of time before they demonstrate the inclination to become regular discussants. Future research should investigate these possibilities.

The inconsistent findings in perceptions of discussions and perceptions of discussants when civility was manipulated have implications for our understanding of civility and flaming in online political discussions. O'Sullivan and Flanagin (2003) point out that definitions of flaming often neglect the context of communication. Moreover, people have certain expectations regarding the appropriateness of politeness that vary according to the interpersonal context (Brown & Levinson, 1978). It seems that civility in the context of political communication means something more than mere politeness as suggested by Papacharissi (2004). According to Papacharissi, there is a difference between conversational impoliteness and incivility. That is, conversational impoliteness, defined as a form of sincere and spontaneous reflection of emotions, could be essential for robust and heated discussions that in turn enhance democratic deliberation. Incivility, on the other hand, is linked to attitudes and beliefs and as such could have graver repercussions on the deliberativeness of online political discussions as compared to conversational impoliteness. These suggestions and the findings of this study imply that when people have differing viewpoints in online political discussions, some impoliteness is expected from opposing discussants and that with the acceptance of such forms of impoliteness, tougher issues could be brought up, which could eventually increase the democratic potential of such discussions. However, it is also believed that civility needs to be more highly emphasized in online political discussions as politeness and civility are a means of showing mutual respect, especially when expressing views that others might find objectionable (Mutz et al., 2002). It seems that civility in online political discussions would vary depending on the context and the topics of discussion and that further research has to be done to determine the perceptual impact of civility and politeness.

The fact that discussions were perceived as more informative and persuasive in the synchronous conditions shows that presentation format can influence how people perceive online political discussions. Future research might want to look into how interface designs (e.g., the extent of interactivity, or greater user involvement) could have an impact on people's perceptions, other than just the content of conversations. Perhaps chat discussions provide a better format for political discussions. Furthermore, the results of this study suggest that some people are attracted to greater diversity. This implies that the encouragement of greater diversity in online political discussions could in turn motivate more people to want to participate in them, at least among undergraduate students.

The findings of this study may suffer from some limitations in its experimental design. Two different issues were used due to time and resource constraints. Although care was taken to ensure that the content remained the same for all the stimulus materials, it was necessary to break the original forums down for the synchronous conditions. To some extent, this created non-equivalence across conditions beyond the intended manipulations. This is a problem inherent in trying to examine structural features in general, and differences between synchronous and asynchronous discussions in particular. Although holding content constant in investigations of synchronicity may create a purer experimental design (i.e., create a better condition of ceteris paribus), it may actually reduce the ecological validity of the study, and confound the manipulation with expectations. That is, because chat appears to be generally less substantive than posts in a discussion forum (Hill & Hughes, 1998), making the content equivalent may violate participants' expectations of the two forms of CMC. In this study, we started with discussion forum posts and modified them to look like chat exchanges, so the synchronous condition may have "benefited" from the treatment creation process. If we had started with chat exchanges and grouped them to form discussion forum posts, the asynchronous condition might have "suffered" due to prior experience and expectations. Future research should assess this possibility, and further explore the interrelatedness of form and content.

The participants were young people who might not have had a chance to vote in the country's general elections yet, and who exhibited a lack of interest in political affairs and had limited participation in political activities. This could explain why there were no significant effects in their intentions to participate; they are generally disinclined, and so subtle differences in how political discussions are presented are unlikely to change their intentions. Future studies should look at another demographic group, possibly older adults or minority groups, since it is well known that different kinds of people have different motivations for becoming civically and politically involved (Shah, Kwak, & Holbert, 2001). In general, young people are attracted to technology not because they seek political enlightenment, but more for social interaction and personal stimulation (Iyengar & Jackman, 2003), so more could be done to integrate social interaction in online political discussions in order to attract the younger generation.

In addition, the participants were mostly people who had no prior experience in visiting online political websites. According to Dahlberg (2001), the people who lurk in online political websites are just as committed and reflexive as the frequent participants, implying that lurkers could identify to a certain extent with the discussions in which they lurk. This provides an opportunity for future research to explore the unique characteristics of lurkers, who could be similar to regular contributors in various ways but could also vary in certain key aspects. For example, lurkers tend to be more objective and distant and are therefore less invested in the discussions. As such, they could have very different responses from actual discussants to certain content and formal attributes. While it would be interesting to study the perceptions of regular discussants in naturally occurring settings, it would be extremely difficult to achieve this goal as it would require a study that is both ecologically valid and ethical. Alternatively, future studies could have participants come back for more sessions, so that the participants get more exposure to online political discussions and become more involved in the issues. In addition, future studies could investigate how to encourage lurkers to become regular contributors in online political discussions, since lurkers make up the majority of visitors to online discussion forums.

One other possibility that could limit the generalizability of the findings of this study is that Asians may have different attitudes, perceptions, and practices of politeness than other kinds of people. This is suggested by some of the seminal work on politeness by Brown and Levinson (1987), and by more recent research on Asian cultures and language (e.g., Lee, 2004; Spence-Brown, 1993). Although one must be careful not to overgeneralize the importance of politeness among Asians, results from a study on Thai chat rooms lead Panyametheekul and Herring (2003) to believe that this cultural difference does exist in CMC, at least among their Thai participants. Clearly, this is something to be investigated in subsequent studies.

Future research concerning perceptions of online political discussions by politically-engaged adults, lurkers, and members of different ethnic groups could lead to a better understanding of Internet-based political communication. It can also help to extend our knowledge of CMC processes in general. As the demand for more avenues of political expression increases, the potential of online political discussions should be tapped to enrich democratic processes and increase political participation.

This project was supported by a grant from the Singapore Internet Project. A previous version of this paper was presented to the Information Systems Division of the International Communication Association at the annual conference held in New Orleans, LA, USA, May 2004.

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* Indicates items that were dropped from composite measure based on analysis of pretest findings.

Elaine W. J. Ng recently completed her Master's degree in Communication Studies at the School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is currently a tutor at the same university. Her research interests include computer-mediated communication and political communication.
Address: 77 Kasai Road, Singapore 808324

Benjamin H. Detenber (Ph.D., Stanford University) is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Head of the Communication Research Division. His research interests focus on psychological processing and communication technologies, and cognitive and emotional responses to mediated presentations.
Address: School of Communication and Information, 31 Nanyang Link, Singapore 637718