Social Media Incivility: An Investigation of the Trends and Practices among Young Students in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, South Africa
Stenford Matenda 
& Gedala Mulliah Naidoo
Issue: Vol.6 No.9 Article 7 pp.1855 – 1868
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2025697 | Published online 20th August, 2025
© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
One of the emerging concerns over the growing popularity of social networks amongst young people is the incivility displayed on these platforms. It is now commonly recognised that social networks are now primary sites for youth civic performance. This paper thus examined trends of digital incivility and the experiences of young people in this regard. A mixed methods research design was used for this study, and data was collected using a quantitative survey as well as focus group discussions among young students in Mthatha, Eastern Cape South Africa. The results revealed that insensitive language, deception, hate speech and trolling – are the most common forms of incivility. Stalking and cyberbullying are, however, less common experiences. The results show that social networks reduce public self-awareness amongst young people and drive online civic engagement as some of the participants got positive emotional experiences implying that these practices pose no significant threats to democratic practices. The study observes a growing trend of intolerant discourses amongst young people with some statements bordering on hate speech mostly spurred by the disinhibition effect. The study recommends that there is a need to strengthen digital literacies to reduce. Given the importance of deliberative democracy, the paper argues that strengthening cultural norms of respect of the other, improving digital literacies and the use of available laws where necessary is vital to curb the growing instances of incivility caused by deindividuation and promote digital civic virtues amongst this demographic group scholarship.
Keywords: Civility, De-individuation, Disinhibition, Digital citizens.
Aikin, Scott F, and J Caleb Clanton. “Developing Group‐deliberative Virtues.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 27, no. 4 (2010): 409–24.
Annas, Julia. “Nicomachean Ethics.” Virtue, Happiness, Knowledge: Themes from the Work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin, 2018, 184.
Antoci, Angelo, Alexia Delfino, Fabio Paglieri, Fabrizio Panebianco, and Fabio Sabatini. “Civility vs. Incivility in Online Social Interactions: An Evolutionary Approach.” PLOS ONE 11, no. 11 (November 1, 2016): e0164286. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0164286.
Axtell, Guy, and Philip Olson. “Recent Work in Applied Virtue Ethics.” American Philosophical Quarterly 49 (July 1, 2012): 183–203.
Balakrishnan, Vimala, Shahzaib Khan, and Hamid R. Arabnia. “Improving Cyberbullying Detection Using Twitter Users’ Psychological Features and Machine Learning.” Computers & Security 90 (March 2020): 101710. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2019.101710.
Bandura, Albert. “Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication.” In Media Effects, 110–40. Routledge, 2009.
Bats, Jan. “ The Moral Matter of an Interactive Online Domain: A Philosophical and Empirical Exploration of How Our Interactive Relation with the Online Domain Mediates Online Morality.” University of Twente., 2019.
Bellazzi, Francesca, and Konrad v Boyneburgk. “COVID-19 Calls for Virtue Ethics.” Journal of Law and the Biosciences 7, no. 1 (2020): lsaa056.
Bennett, W. Lance. “What’s Wrong with Incivility? Civility as the New Censorship in American Politics.” 1. Seattle, WA, 2011.
Bennett, W. Lance, and Alexandra Segerberg. “THE LOGIC OF CONNECTIVE ACTION.” Information, Communication & Society 15, no. 5 (June 2012): 739–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661.
Bidwell, Nicola J. “Moving the Centre to Design Social Media in Rural Africa.” AI & Society 31, no. 1 (2016): 51–77.
Bosch, Tanja, and Bruce Mutsvairo. “Pictures, Protests and Politics: Mapping Twitter Images during South Africa’s Fees Must Fall Campaign.” African Journalism Studies 38, no. 2 (2017): 71–89.
Boulianne, Shelley. “Social Media Use and Participation: A Meta-Analysis of Current Research.” Information, Communication & Society 18, no. 5 (2015): 524–38.
Buckels, Erin E, Paul D Trapnell, and Delroy L Paulhus. “Trolls Just Want to Have Fun.” Personality and Individual Differences 67 (2014): 97–102.
Carli, Vladimir, Camilla Wasserman, Danuta Wasserman, Marco Sarchiapone, Alan Apter, Judit Balazs, Julio Bobes, et al. “The Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe (SEYLE) Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT): Methodological Issues and Participant Characteristics.” BMC Public Health 13, no. 1 (December 16, 2013): 479. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-479.
Cho, Alexander, Jasmina Byrne, and Zoë Pelter. “Digital Civic Engagement by Young People.” UNICEF Office of Global Insight and Policy, 2020, 3–23.
Cini, Lorenzo. “Disrupting the Neoliberal University in South Africa: The #FeesMustFall Movement in 2015.” Current Sociology 67, no. 7 (November 12, 2019): 942–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392119865766.
Coles, Bryn Alexander, and Melanie West. “Trolling the Trolls: Online Forum Users Constructions of the Nature and Properties of Trolling.” Computers in Human Behavior 60 (2016): 233–44.
Connolly, Patrick Joseph. “Trolling as Speech Act.” Journal of Social Philosophy 53, no. 3 (September 7, 2022): 404–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12427.
Creswell, John Ward, and John David Creswell. Research Design Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2018.
Dahlberg, Lincoln. “Visibility and the Public Sphere: A Normative Conceptualisation.” Javnost – The Public 25, no. 1–2 (April 3, 2018): 35–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2018.1418818.
Dahlgren, Peter. “Media, Knowledge and Trust: The Deepening Epistemic Crisis of Democracy.” Javnost-The Public 25, no. 1–2 (2018): 20–27.
Deth, Jan W Van. “New Modes of Participation and Norms of Citizenship.” In New Participatory Dimensions in Civil Society, 115–38. Routledge, 2012.
Furnham, Adrian, Steven C Richards, and Delroy L Paulhus. “The Dark Triad of Personality: A 10 Year Review.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7, no. 3 (2013): 199–216.
Ganesh, Bharath. “Weaponizing White Thymos: Flows of Rage in the Online Audiences of the Alt-Right.” Cultural Studies 34, no. 6 (2020): 892–924.
Gervais, Bryan T. “Incivility Online: Affective and Behavioral Reactions to Uncivil Political Posts in a Web-Based Experiment.” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 12,no.2(2015):167–85.
Gray, David. Doing Research in the Real World. 4th ed. London: Sage Publications, 2018.
Hardaker, Claire. “‘I Refuse to Respond to This Obvious Troll’: An Overview of Responses to (Perceived) Trolling.” Corpora 10, no. 2 (2015): 201–29.
———. “‘Uh…. Not to Be Nitpicky, But… the Past Tense of Drag Is Dragged, Not Drug.’: An Overview of Trolling Strategies.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 1, no. 1 (2013): 58–86.
Julien, Chris. “Bourdieu, Social Capital and Online Interaction.” Sociology 49, no. 2 (2015): 356–73.
Kaplan, Andreas M., and Michael Haenlein. “Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media.” Business Horizons 53, no. 1 (January 2010): 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003.
Kosmidis, Spyros, and Yannis Theocharis. “Can Social Media Incivility Induce Enthusiasm? Evidence from Survey Experiments.” Public Opinion Quarterly 84, no. S1 (2020): 284–308.
Kurek, Anna, Paul E Jose, and Jaimee Stuart. “‘I Did It for the LULZ’: How the Dark Personality Predicts Online Disinhibition and Aggressive Online Behavior in Adolescence.” Computers in Human Behavior 98 (2019): 31–40.
Lengauer, Dayana. “New Media in Southeast Asia: Concepts and Research Implications.” ASEAS-Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies 9, no. 2 (2016): 187–94.
Lukito, Josephine, Taeyoung Lee, Zelly Martin, Katlyn Glover, An Hu, and Zhe Cui. “Connective Action in Myanmar: A Mixed-Method Analysis of Spring Revolution.” Information, Communication & Society 27, no. 7 (2024): 1422–40.
Mandarano, Lynn, Mahbubur Meenar, and Christopher Steins. “Building Social Capital in the Digital Age of Civic Engagement.” Journal of Planning Literature 25, no. 2 (November 11, 2010): 123–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412210394102.
March, Evita, Rachel Grieve, Danielle Wagstaff, and Alexandra Slocum. “Exploring Anger as a Moderator of Narcissism and Antisocial Behaviour on Tinder.” Personality and Individual Differences 161 (July 2020): 109961. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.109961.
Masullo Chen, Gina, Ashley Muddiman, Tamar Wilner, Eli Pariser, and Natalie Jomini Stroud. “We Should Not Get Rid of Incivility Online.” Social Media + Society 5, no. 3 (April 16, 2019). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119862641.
Mbendera, Raphael. “Ubuntu Ethical Values and Africa’s Quest for a Better Home.” American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research 4, no. 8 (2020): 177–87.
Merrill, Samuel, and Nigel Copsey. “Retweet Solidarity: Transatlantic Twitter Connectivity between Militant Antifascists in the USA and UK.” Social Movement Studies 24, no. 1 (January 2, 2025): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2022.2142547.
Molina, Rocío Galarza, and Freddie J Jennings. “The Role of Civility and Metacommunication in Facebook Discussions.” Communication Studies 69, no. 1 (2018): 42–66.
Moor, Lily, and Joel R. Anderson. “A Systematic Literature Review of the Relationship between Dark Personality Traits and Antisocial Online Behaviours.” Personality and Individual Differences 144 (July 2019): 40–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.02.027.
Moore, Alexander. “Online Disinhibition and Its Influence on Cyber Incivility.” Clemson University, 2019.
Muhlberger, Peter. “Pro-Social Reasoning in Deliberative Policy Choices.” International Journal of Public Participation 1, no. 1 (2007).
Papacharissi, Zizi. “The Virtual Sphere 2.0: The Internet, the Public Sphere, and Beyond.” In Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics, 230–45. Routledge, 2008.
Perfumi, Serena Coppolino, Franco Bagnoli, Corrado Caudek, and Andrea Guazzini. “Deindividuation Effects on Normative and Informational Social Influence within Computer-Mediated-Communication.” Computers in Human Behavior 92 (2019): 230–37.
Plano-Clark, Vicki, and John Creswell. Understanding Research: A Consumer’s Guide. Boston: Pearson, 2015.
Rossini, Patrícia. “Disentangling Uncivil and Intolerant Discourse in Online Political Talk.” In A Crisis of Civility?, 142–57. Routledge, 2019.
Rost, Katja, Lea Stahel, and Bruno S Frey. “Digital Social Norm Enforcement: Online Firestorms in Social Media.” PLoS One 11, no. 6 (2016): e0155923.
Runions, Kevin C, and Michal Bak. “Online Moral Disengagement, Cyberbullying, and Cyber-Aggression.” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 18, no. 7 (2015): 400–405.
Sampson, Tony, D., and Jussi Parikka. The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2011.
Sekaran, U., and R. Bougie. Research Methods for Business. 7th ed. Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, 2010.
Sharma, Sanjay. “Black Twitter? Racial Hashtags, Networks and Contagion.” New Formations 78, no. 78 (July 1, 2013): 46–64. https://doi.org/10.3898/NewF.78.02.2013.
Simon, Mónika, Kasper Welbers, Anne C. Kroon, and Damian Trilling. “Linked in the Dark: A Network Approach to Understanding Information Flows within the Dutch Telegramsphere.” Information, Communication & Society 26, no. 15 (November 18, 2023): 3054–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2133549.
Smith, Erika E. “Building Critical Digital Literacies for Social Media through Educational Development.” Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education 19, no. 2 (2024): 64–89.
Srivastava, Aashish. “Social Media and Online Trolling: Examining the Legal Developments in Platform Responsibilities for Tackling Trolling in the US, UK, and Australia.” In Handbook on Cyber Hate: The Modern Cyber Evil, 275–99. Springer, 2024.
Strydom, A., and R.M. Bezuidenhout. “ Qualitative Data Collection.” In Research Matters, edited by Du Plooy Cilliers F., C. Davis, and R.M. Bezuidenhout, 228–63. Cape Town: Juta, 2014.
Stryker, Robin, Bethany Anne Conway, and J Taylor Danielson. “What Is Political Incivility?” Communication Monographs 83, no. 4 (2016): 535–56.
Suler, John. “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” Cyberpsychology & Behavior 7, no. 3 (2004): 321–26.
Suroweicki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations. London: Doubleday & Co., 2004.
Sydnor, Emily. “Platforms for Incivility: Examining Perceptions across Different Media Formats.” In Studying Politics across Media, 97–116. Routledge, 2020.
Tashakkori, Abbas, and Charles Teddlie. Sage Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social & Behavioural Research. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications Ltd., 2010.
Zhang, Weiyu, and Emmanuel C Lallana. “Youth, ICTs, and Civic Engagement in Asia.” International Communication Gazette. SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England, 2013.
Zuckerman, Ethan. “New Media, New Civics?” Policy & Internet 6, no. 2 (2014): 151–68.
Professor Naidoo is the Deputy Dean of Research, Innovation, and Internationalisation at the University of Zululand’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He holds a PhD in Communication Science, along with other degrees and a postgraduate diploma in Higher Education. Previously, as Head of Department, he played a pivotal role in developing several programmes and securing their accreditation. Prof. Naidoo is an active member of various university committees and teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. He is also a Chartered Public Relations Practitioner and is a member of the Professional Board of the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA) and served as regional chairperson in the Zululand region. His research interests include digital communication, the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and strategic public relations. He has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters and has successfully supervised several master’s and doctoral students. He also serves on many scientific committees and editorial boards.
Dr Matenda is currently the Head of Department for the Department of Marketing, Public Relations and Communication. Prior to this he was an acting manager for teaching and learning for the Directorate of Learning (Mthatha Campus). He has also worked in the Writing Centre since 2016 after having worked as a public relations management lecturer at Walter Sisulu since 2008. He has several publications spanning all the areas he has worked in but has specific research interests are in journalism practice, use of social media for civic engagement and also general issues on student success.
Matenda, Stenford, and Gedala Mulliah Naidoo. “Social Media Incivility: An Investigation of the Trends and Practices among Young Students in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, South Africa,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 6, no. 9 (2025): 1855 – 1868, https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2025697.
© 2025 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
