Online Civil Behavior

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With the creation of the internet, people can hide as “anonymous” and say anything they choose because they’re alone in reality. In this essay I will focus on exploring why people behave the way they do online, and present some positive recommendation changes. My main argument is that good people can behave poorly in online situations, but civil behavior can be encouraged by changes to online environment designs.
It’s proven that bad experiences are focused on more than good experiences. Online interaction can relate to this in two ways. First, the person reading the online comment may think it’s much worse than it really is. Second, humans are more prone to pay attention to the negative versus the positive input. A recent study conducted by Will Felps showed that one individual can drastically impact the rest of a group. The study applied to real life, face to face meetings but it can also be applied to the online community. Historical beliefs that groups have more power than individuals was contradicted based on the evidence discovered by Felps. The groups with one negative person did thirty to forty percent worse than groups without that person. Felps also found that our behavior is contagious and the behavior by the negative person was mirrored. A possible solution to this one negative person issue could be that the website would have someone supervise the first few hours of comments to set the right tone for everyone else reading the material.
One unique trait given to the online community is that anyone can leave a comment regardless of content and not be seen by anyone who reads it. A problem with communicating online is that no one is seen however studies have shown that having the feeling of being watched can improve coop...

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...bable in seeing patterns that didn’t exist. The point of this experiment was to show that the design of an online environment can cause a person to either feel as if they do or don’t have control. The person in control will be more calm and content.
These studies show that there are some ways in which internet civility can be drastically improved by making people feel more in control and responsible for their voice online. Having online users feeling watched will combat some of the bad behaviors that are currently happening today. The online environment design also plays a huge role with how people respond to certain things. This incivility on the internet can’t be completely stopped just like crime can’t be stopped in the real world. However, with some simple steps by web and computer designers, the virtual experience could be greatly improved for all.

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