A second Frequently Voiced Objection to getting involved in civil discussion is rooted in the view that politics as a whole is just too sordid an affair to dirty one’s…
Incivility doesn’t cure itself. Indeed, there’s good reason to think that it will only get worse if we do nothing to combat it. But what can we do about it? …
If incivility harms us in so many ways, both as individual citizens and as a society, why does it seem to have reached epidemic proportions? I think the answer has…
Comparing incivility to disease helps bring home some of the ways its negative effects on individuals and society interact. Incivility presents itself “clinically” as disrespect and discrimination, on one hand,…
Incivility doesn’t just harm us as individual citizens; it harms us as a society, too—in at least three ways. First, by making it difficult—if not impossible—to engage in reasoned exchanges,…
As long as a discussion is respectful, constructive, open, and fair, we think it qualifies as “civil”—and worth having. At the same time, keep in mind that there are different…
Our website’s home page proclaims that EnCiv is all about “civil discussion for a better democracy.” Just what do we mean by that? How, specifically, does civil discussion improve democracy?…
Incivility is distasteful, sometimes disgusting, and occasionally downright offensive, but does it do real harm? —More than you might think: both to all of us as individual citizens and…
In my last post I gave a capsule description of EnCiv’s understanding of “civil discussion.” I now want to add an important detail: civil discussion’s key dimensions—being respectful, constructive, and…
A study published this September in The American Economic Review suggests that those worried about the polarizing effects—and power—of cable news may indeed have cause for concern. After a careful…
Des Moines at night - Photo by IABoomerFlickr In EnCiv’s first real-world pilot project, likely member organizations Ballotpedia and Interactivity Foundation (IF) collaborated on a fall 2017 voter information…
Photo by Tech.Co (formerly Tech Cocktail) Americans didn’t invent the idea of the “wisdom of the people”. More than two thousand years ago Aristotle drew attention to it by favorably…