The Cost of Doing Politics Online: Sources and Consequences of Political Toxicity

Social media have become an important arena for political campaigning and representation. However, politicians are increasingly subject to insults, threats, and general incivility when doing politics online. What are the sources and the consequences of online political toxicity? This paper draws on psychological theories to derive two competing hypotheses; the "insider" vs. the "outsider" hypothesis. Whereas the first suggests that powerful insiders of the political system, i.e., men, incumbents, and government parties, will be over-proportionally targeted by toxicity, the latter argues that outsiders, like women and marginal parties are more exposed. The paper draws on a full sample of candidates’ campaign activities on Twitter in the run-up to the 2021 German national election to test these claims empirically. Using linear mixed effect models, I estimate how candidate characteristics affect the degree of and type of toxicity in over 13,000 Twitter conversations (comprising over 800,000 single tweets) between citizens and political candidates. The findings provide more support for the insider hypothesis, suggesting that men, incumbents, and members of government parties were subject to significantly higher degrees of general toxicity and personal toxicity. Second, the paper utilizes a difference-in-differences design to measure toxicity's consequences. I here find that candidates who are subject to severe toxicity reduce their tweet activity by about 15% in the following days. The paper thus nuances findings from survey research, and suggests that online political toxicity may work as a corrective of the powerful rather than an exclusionary mechanism.