Political Expression, Disagreement, and Incivility on Social Media: The Conditional Role of Social Identity in the Context of Hong Kong

When it comes to one’s expression of political views on SNS, it is likely to eventuate some sort of political disagreement with others because political expression creates a potential loop for discussion compared to sole information consumption on SNS. The disagreement might evolve into two possible situations: it could either take the form of disagreement in civil manners between involved actors, or it could be manifested as uncivil disaccord (i.e., hostile correspondence). In addition, this study argues social identity might play a conditional role in determining political disagreement on SNS is likely to result in experiencing political incivility. Relying on a two-wave panel survey from Hong Kong in 2020, this study shows that political expression on SNS is significantly associated with political disagreement. However, the latter is not associated with political incivility on SNS. Moderation analysis shows that the direct effect of political disagreement on political incivility is moderated by social identity, revealing that the effect is only significant and positive for dual social identity holders but not for single social identity holders. It also shows that political disagreement mediated the effect of political expression on political incivility for dual identifiers. This study contributes to the literature by offering a mechanism that predicts political incivility on SNS conditioned on social identity.