Being part of a tight-knit online community doesn’t make you more polite—it actually turns you into a jerk toward anyone on the outside.
April 10, 2026
Original Paper
Network Structure, Addressivity, and Civility in Networked Publics
SocArXiv · un6ev_v1
The Takeaway
We often assume that strong social bonds create accountability and better behavior. Instead, these tight networks create echo chambers where being hostile to outsiders becomes the accepted social norm, actively destroying public civility.
From the abstract
On open social media platforms, the convergence of diverse, often incompatible audiences—colleagues, family, strangers—within a single communicative space creates persistent challenges for civil expression. This longitudinal study examines how the structural properties of users' social networks and their use of addressivity (@mentions and replies) shaped communication civility on Twitter during the early 2010s. Drawing on a dataset of 1,827 user timelines with over 1,700 tweets each spanning app