Does a Speaker’s (In)formal Role in News Media Shape Perceptions of Political Incivility?

We used a media-focused vignette experiment to test how speaker role and norm-violation level influenced perceived incivility, including respondents’ age, gender, and partisanship as covariates. One vignette involved deception regarding immigration in political talk radio; the other involved epithetic name-calling in televised political talk regarding state-funded contraception. Respondents perceived the same deception as more uncivil when from a talk radio host-pundit relative to a call-in listener. Respondents did not perceive the same name calling as more uncivil when from a TV interviewer than from a citizen panelist. Covariate effects were found for name-calling, but not deception. Overall findings suggest Americans still hold media practitioners to a higher standard of truthfulness and that reactions to incivility are contextual.