Twitter, incivility, and presidential communication: A theoretical incursion into spectacle and power

By approaching civility as an operational logic for democracy, we ask how incivility is a strategy related to power and domination, particularly from the president of the United States. We propose that Twitter is part of an infrastructure of incivility, through which structures and discursive mechanisms contribute to a devaluation of normative democratic discourses. Spectacle provides a theoretical framework to contextualize the forces at play in mediating our relations. Using President Trump’s Twitter use as a case study, we offer four propositions that together formulate a framework for theorizing the strategic use and deployment of incivility as an increasingly legitimate, yet problematic tool for democratic governance.