Shutting Down: How Might Online Debate Culture Impact Our Students’ Views of Civil Discourse?

Abstract

In recent years, political content on social media platforms (e.g., YouTube, Twitter/X) has coalesced around an adversarial, controversy-fueled debate and discourse format (Munger & Phillips, 2022). Our students are exposed to this content, and, in many cases, this may be their first exposure to civil (or uncivil) discourse around controversial political issues (Clark, 2018; Middaugh, 2019). The main objective of this piece is to explore the implications of our Social Studies students’ exposure to these sources by analyzing the nature of this online debate content through the lens of what social studies education research has determined as best-practice teaching in discussion and civil discourse. In other words, to what extent do these online examples of civil discourse model, or not model, best practice in social studies classroom civil discourse? To answer this question, we analyzed the content of two popular YouTube videos centered on political debate through a qualitative content analysis. This content analysis consisted of multiple, iterative rounds of coding, pattern identification, and meaning-making (Miles et al., 2020). Our content analysis indicates that while some aspects of online debate can model civil discourse, these debates also fall prey to logical fallacies, bad faith argumentation, and lack of consensus-building. These debates are unable to live up to the key principles of high-quality discussion in a Social Studies classroom. The analysis suggests that more research is necessary to understand how secondary students engage with political content online and that teachers should be aware of the potential impact of this content in their efforts to teach disciplinary skills in civics and history.