Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 6
Posts 1 - 6

My friend messages me on every platform. How do I politely say 'back off'?

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 19.4.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | email, politeness, social media, texting
Summary | How does one deal with a pushy friends that is trying to reach one through all possible media channels? This discrepancy in how both people define the friendship and how often they feel the need to communicate can be quite tricky to maneuver. One can either be passive-aggressive about it (preferred in British culture) and train the friend by always taking your time to respond and choosing the media channel with the least likeliness of a quick response turning into a digital conversation: email. The alternative is to politely but explicitly mark your boundaries by telling the friend that you cannot respond to this many messages.
Image Description | Illustration with text message bubbles colliding and exploding.

People who swear a lot are more likely to be honest, study finds

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 18.1.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, politeness, research/study
Summary | Researchers found out that people who cuss more are more likely to be honest. If they do not filter their language to please other people, they are less likely to filter the content too. The study analysed thousands of Facebook posts and found that Facebook users in the north east of the US are more prone to use expletives in their posts while users from the south use less swear words. Those who cussed on Facebook also used a lexicon indicating honesty (such words as "I" and "me").
Image Description | Getty image of a woman crossing her fingers behind her back and a Reuters image of Donald Trump.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), male(s)

Nextdoor broke the social network mold. Could political ads make it just like Facebook?

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 5.5.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | politeness, politics, social media
Summary | A small but growing social media platform called "Nextdoor" caters to neighborhood exchanges. Neighbors are encouraged to define their neighborhoods and exchange useful information like good dentists and other public services or police activity in the neighborhood. They have explicitly defined that the rapport on the platform is supposed to be civil and pragmatic so the general tone is very polite, also because users' identities and addresses are confirmed (no anonymity). The platform urges users to report rants defining them linguistically as "ALL CAPS, excessive punctuation, provocative language, judgmental accusations, or repetitive explanations."
Image Description | A portrait of Nextdoor's CEO.
Image Tags | male(s)

Cop launches furious rant about 'yoofs' - but parents are really not happy

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 11.5.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, law, politeness, social media, youth
Summary | An unidentified police officer posted a rant about youths in the Manchester area asking parents to "lock up their kids till school time on Monday" because they are out of control, causing public nuisance. Local teachers and parents reported the post as wildly inappropriate and the heads of the police department issued an apology and promised to find out who posted the offensive content as officers are supposed to uphold their standard of behavior online as well. Many people however liked the post because they felt understood. They commented engourangments to the anonymous officer that he/she should not let the political correctness army get him/her down and keep his/her sense of humor.
Image Description | Getty images of young men/boys in black tracksuits from behind and a young man/boy with his face partially hidden with a black hoodie.
Image Tags | male(s)

'Mob rule' drives trolls more than anonymity

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Newspaper | Metro
Date | 11.5.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | politeness, research/study, social media
Summary | Researchers have found out that commenters online are more influenced by the general tone of a comment space than by anonymity. Thus if people post in a comment section where the general tone is offensive and aggressive they are likely to conform - no matter whether they are anonymous or whether they have to give their Facebook information. Similarly, if a forum has a respectful general tone, new commenters are likely to follow suit.
Image Description | N/A

If manners maketh the man, then what is Donald Trump?

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 13.4.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | politeness, politics, social media, spelling, Twitter
Summary | One can dislike Donald Trump for many reasons, but for the author one of the main reasons is his overuse of capitalization in his Twitter posts as well as his carelessness (that he mixes up p's and q's). This carelessness translates directly into his general rudeness, his inaptitude for diplomacy, and the paradox in defending old values by spitting on political correctness which is technically just plain old politeness.
Image Description | Image of Donald Trump with his hands in front of his face and a portrait of the author.
Image Tags | hand(s), male(s)

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