Investigating Incivility in Online Business Discussions

The study seeks to investigate the occurrence of incivility in the online business world. In particular, we focus on examining discussions on LinkedIn and seek to provide a topological understanding of the incivility in online business discussions based on thread structure. We analyzed the process of the thread creation and incivility diffusion in the discussions and interestingly found that the likelihood of an uncivil outburst in a discussion is positively correlated with the structural visibility of the uncivil comment in the thread structure. This suggests that individuals who are less well central in the discussion are more likely to engage in incivility. More importantly, we observed a negative correlation between the chances of the uncivil outburst at different stages of the discussions and the discussions’ lifetime, which means that late interactions with less structural visibility in the discussions are more likely to be affected by incivility. The findings provided in-depth insight into the parasocial relationship between the original post creator and the future discussion participants and how the jack-in-the-box effect leads to incivility. The discovery also shed light on possible remedies to prevent the spread of negativity in the online business world. I hope the results of this study could provide a theoretical ground and empirical support for future research on different aspects of the networked behavior. On the other hand, such practical implications on managing online incivility could also be appreciated by companies that are running online-social platform, like LinkedIn. Thank you!