Does incivility weaken or strengthen democracy?
In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Emily Sydnor joins Julia, Lee, and James to consider how people react to incivility in the media and the role it plays in our politics. Sydnor is an assistant professor of political science at Southwestern University, where she specializes in political communication and political psychology. Her research focuses on incivility in the media, its interaction with individual psychology traits, and its influence on political behavior. Sydnor is the author of Disrespectful Democracy: The Psychology of Political Incivility (Columbia University Press, 2019).
Does incivility weaken or strengthen democracy? What is the relationship between incivility and political conflict? How do individual Americans react to incivility in the media? Does it impact their political participation? If so, what can they do about it? These are some of the questions Emily, Julia, Lee, and James discuss on this week’s episode.