How do users and communities respond to news from unreliable sources? How does news from these sources change online conversations? In this work, we examine the role of misinformation in sparking political incivility and toxicity on the social media platform Reddit. Utilizing the Google Jigsaw Perspective API to identify toxicity, hate speech, and other forms of incivility, we find that Reddit comments posted in response to misinformation articles are 71.4% more likely to be toxic than comments responding to authentic news articles. Identifying specific instances of commenters' incivility and utilizing an exponential random graph model, we then show that when reacting to a misinformation story, Reddit users are more likely to be toxic to users of different political beliefs than in other settings. Finally, utilizing a zero-inflated negative binomial regression, we identify that as the toxicity of subreddits increases, users are more likely to comment on misinformation-related Reddit submissions.

翻译：用户和社区如何回应来自不可靠来源的新闻？这些来源的新闻如何改变在线对话？本文研究了虚假信息在社交媒体平台Reddit上引发政治不文明行为和有害言论中的作用。利用Google Jigsaw Perspective API识别有害言论、仇恨言论及其他形式的不文明行为，我们发现，针对虚假信息文章发布的Reddit评论，其有害可能性比针对真实新闻文章发布的评论高出71.4%。通过识别评论者不文明行为的具体实例，并运用指数随机图模型，我们进一步表明，在对虚假信息报道作出反应时，Reddit用户更倾向于对其他政治信仰的用户表现出有害行为，其程度高于其他情境。最后，利用零膨胀负二项回归，我们确认，随着子社区有害程度的增加，用户更可能对与虚假信息相关的Reddit帖子发表评论。