This research uses artificial intelligence and manual content-analysis to examine the diffusion of incivility against political leaders on Twitter during the 2022 Italian election campaign. Using a mixed approach (artificial intelligence and manual content analysis), we examined 22,465 uncivil tweets posted in the 4 weeks before the vote. Results show that hostility toward leaders increases as voting approaches and as candidates’ public visibility grows, and that it affects frontrunner leaders the most. Furthermore, the analysis of the different forms of incivility showed that it changes depending on the target it hits, revealing unexpected aspects: contrary to expectations, incivility against the only female leader (Giorgia Meloni) are not “sexist attacks” but forms of demonization (i.e., association with figures/symbols concerning totalitarian regimes); while against Giuseppe Conte, accusations of “illegality,” lies and “misinformation” prevail, that is, the same kind of incivility that he and his party use against opponents. Finally, we found that the authors of uncivil attacks are mainly ordinary/sporadic users, with all the consequences that this implies in terms of a normalization of incivility in public debate.

中文翻译：

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政客受到抨击：公民在社交媒体上对政治领导人的不文明行为


本研究使用人工智能和手动内容分析来研究 2022 年意大利竞选期间 Twitter 上针对政治领导人的不文明行为的传播情况。使用混合方法（人工智能和手动内容分析），我们检查了投票前 4 周内发布的 22,465 条不文明推文。结果表明，随着投票的临近和候选人公众知名度的提高，对领导人的敌意会增加，并且对领跑者领导人的影响最大。此外，对不同形式的不文明行为的分析表明，它会根据它所击中的目标而变化，揭示了意想不到的方面：与预期相反，针对唯一女性领导人（乔治亚·梅洛尼）的不文明行为不是“性别歧视攻击”，而是妖魔化的形式（即与极权主义政权有关的人物/符号相关联）;而针对朱塞佩·孔特（Giuseppe Conte）的指控则盛行，即他和他的政党对反对者使用的不文明行为。最后，我们发现非文明攻击的作者主要是普通/零星的用户，这意味着公共辩论中不文明行为的所有后果都是正常的。