The finger-pointing started before authorities had even confirmed that one of the victims of a shooting rampage near Tucson was Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The gunman was clearly motivated by negative election rhetoric, the voices behind the fingers said. The political website with the crosshairs, the campaign event with guns. Nonsense, other voices insisted. The website, part of Sarah Palin's efforts to support candidates, was never intended to evoke violence.

Shame on the Pima County sheriff, they said, for sullying a tragedy with his comments calling Arizona a "mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

As victims fought to survive, the finger-pointers just fought. When an emotional President Barack Obama, speaking at a memorial service at the University of Arizona, pleaded for "a more civil and honest public discourse," the airwaves and the Internet instead sputtered with bickering over the Native American speaker whose invocation at the memorial included references to his religious traditions and his family's Mexican heritage.

In the days after the shooting, the words from the memorial still fresh, lawmakers pledged to foster a new civility in tribute to Giffords and the others who were injured or killed. Yet one year later, Americans and their elected leaders still struggle to show each other respect when opinions differ. Partisan brinksmanship plays out in Washington. Back home, voters treat lawmakers with scorn and berate one another for differing opinions. Surveys suggest that Americans recognize the lack of civility and want their leaders to behave better, but experts say that until people exercise civility themselves and demand it from their representatives, little will change.

"As citizens ask for civility in a demonstrable, measurable way, they can get to a place where an elected leader says, 'I've got way too many constituents who want this to ignore it,'" said Cassandra Dahnke, a co-founder of the Houston-based Institute for Civility in Government. "Whether those leaders believe in it or not, it will become politically expedient."

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The issue of civility entwined itself with the Giffords shooting that first day in part because so many people leaped to the conclusion that the man arrested at the scene, Jared Loughner, had been motivated by over-the-top political rhetoric. Loughner, who is charged with 49 felonies related to the attack, was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial and is undergoing treatment at a prison in Missouri before he is evaluated again.

But the reaction itself -- immediate and visceral -- soon emerged as its own example of incivility. Commentators and online writers leveled angry charges against each other for their role in ascribing blame for the tragedy.

"From the moment that shooting happened, we saw mudslinging, even before we knew what was going on," said Clark Olson, an Arizona State University communications professor who has studied civility.

"Some major media outlets reported that Gabrielle Giffords was dead and they were saying it was due to (Sarah) Palin having her in the target in an ad. That sort of thing was everywhere, and it was one of the worst examples of what we can do."

Incivility in politics has almost certainly existed since the moment politics itself was invented. The shootings at a shopping center near Tucson only brightened the spotlight, just as the rancorous health-care town halls did in 2009 and the "tea party" infused elections in 2010.

But researchers say the level of incivility has risen in recent years, and it has moved from the backrooms and barrooms into council chambers and once-decorous settings like Obama's 2009 address to Congress, where Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., yelled to Obama, "You lie!"

"If we sanction that from our elected officials, is it any surprise at all that during town halls, where there are local officials, is it any surprise they would be interrupted and disparaged?" Olson said. "I don't think it should be a surprise."

Voters see mean-spirited political debates, where sarcasm has replaced reasoned thought, Olson said. A Republican leader last month walked out of the House chamber rather than allow a Democrat the chance to speak. The high standards that once existed for elected officials erode with each incident.

So at town-hall meetings, voters booed lawmakers and shouted down fellow citizens who tried to express differing viewpoints. At a 2009 constituent meet-and-greet at a Holbrook Safeway, one very similar to Giffords' 2011 event, former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., left abruptly after some people in line to see her started shouting and demanding that she answer questions. Instead of organizing phone campaigns to express opinions, opponents of a lawmaker flood a congressional switchboard with calls to disable the phone system and prevent others from airing views.

"It's a shame we're reaching that place," said Dahnke. "If we can't talk to one another, we can't do anything else. Being able to maintain civility is critical to problem-solving at any level, whether it's a local school board or international diplomacy. If you cannot talk to one another, you can't solve a problem."

Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said he understands that voters sometimes want to vent their frustrations in some situations.

"Given the mess that the country's in, I can never blame constituents for being angry," he said. "Far be it from me to try to call out my constituents for passionate feelings on things."

Flake said he believes some of the seemingly rude behavior common on cable-news outlets or in online forums is less about incivility than it is about visibility.

"There is still a lot of petty partisanship that goes around, and maybe I'm seeing it through rose-colored glasses, but I do think it has been better," he said. "The cable news feeds it (the perception of incivility) quite a bit. It's much easier to get on if you're going to say some pretty tough things about your opponent."

He concedes such role-playing can send the public the message that compromise is bad, that true believers should never budge from their hard-and-fast positions.

"That's what the public sees, and unfortunately that's what a lot of members of Congress want the public to see," Flake said. "It's not a virtue, unfortunately, to be seen as being able to work across the aisle sometimes. Sometimes it is, but increasingly that is not seen as a strong trait for somebody."

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Public-opinion surveys show that the public recognizes incivility and wants something better, but research also suggests that not everyone is clear about the cause of the rancor.

Eighty percent of Americans surveyed believe that political campaigns are uncivil and many believe they will worsen, according to a June 2011 poll conducted for Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate, two Washington-based public-affairs and research firms. The poll found that 85 percent believe politics in general has become uncivil. Nearly 9 in 10 said that their decisions in upcoming elections would be affected by a candidate's behavior and the way he treats those with opposing opinions.

In a poll conducted in April 2010 for the Center for Political Participation at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, 95 percent say they believe civility in politics is important for a healthy democracy, and 87 percent say it is possible for people to disagree about politics respectfully.

Yet experts say one of the reasons for the rise in incivility is that people no longer want to disagree respectfully. The idea of "agree to disagree" has been squashed by the array of partisan media that allows people to filter out opposing viewpoints.

"There is research to suggest that if you hear a fact presented by the other side, you discount the fact," said John Genette, president of Black Mountain Communications, a company that helps non-profit groups raise money, and one of the architects of an ASU-based project called Civil Dialogue.

"If you're a lefty and you hear that the sun is yellow, you might believe it, but if you hear the sun is yellow according to Fox News, you might say that sometimes it's reddish," he said. "There is a deep distrust of the other side."

Civil Dialogue was born of Genette's own frustrations as an ASU graduate student in 2003, when he found it impossible to have a civil discussion about the Iraq war. Organizers bring together people to discuss issues in a structured format designed to elicit viewpoints from across the spectrum.

"I was one of the worst offenders in terms of feeling passionate but not knowing how to listen very well," he said. "It was troubling. I felt like there had to be a way to facilitate civil conversation."

After researching approaches, Genette began to develop what became Civil Dialogue. He worked with Olson, the ASU professor, and Jennifer Linde, who was artistic director of ASU's Empty Space Theater, a setting for socially relevant works. In a Civil Dialogue session, organizers set up five chairs on a stage.

Two are for people who agree or strongly agree with a provocative statement; two are for people who disagree or strongly disagree with the statement; and the center chair is for someone who is either neutral or who has no clear opinion yet. Once the statement is read and given context, volunteers fill each chair and a discussion begins.

"It's about civility," Linde said. "We are going to disagree. We need to be able to disagree. Our goal is that it's a given. You're not going to come here to learn to agree with somebody, but to disagree in a civil manner and let something productive come out of that dialogue."

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Frank Switzer is lead pastor at Paradise Valley Community Church. As debate heated up over immigration issues in Arizona in 2009 and 2010, he watched his congregants pick up the threads, often disagreeing strongly when there were milestone events, such as the passage of Senate Bill 1070, the immigration-enforcement measure. Switzer talked about the issue from the pulpit at times, and his remarks often drew strong reactions.

"Some people said they didn't think I should talk about political issues from the pulpit," Switzer said. "But it's not just a political issue, it's an issue about human beings. The Bible clearly has lots to say about this issue. I know I challenged our people about this."

Switzer knew Genette from their days as ASU grad students, so he decided to stage a Civil Dialogue session at his church. The result was an engaging session without the incivility of other public forums.

"There were a number of people who walked away not necessarily with changed minds in their positions, but who had more information," he said. "The idea is that everybody can have a civil discussion if they listen, instead of just toeing the company line. Sometimes people haven't stopped to think about what they're saying."

Genette, who works on Civil Dialogue in his spare time, said he senses a hunger for more civil discussions on hot-button issues.

"But there is this feeling, this fear of being ambushed, this fear that if I talk to the other side, someone with another viewpoint, that they're going to try to talk me out of my viewpoint.

"We don't expect to turn the tide in an hour-and-a-half discussion," he said. "If we can prompt people, if we can expose people to the possibility of civil conversation and dialogue, we feel like we're chipping away at the toxic nature of the political discourse."

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Any movement toward more civil politics will likely originate at the grass-roots level and move through the system slowly, experts say. Media outlets promote and profit from debates that invite hard-line opinions. Politicians often believe they can win only if they go negative. No one will change overnight.

"The political landscape is more dictated by personalized politics than it is about issue-based politics," said U.S. Rep. Ra�l Grijalva, D-Ariz. "I think civility needs to be driven by the issue and the comportment and the comity that one sets up for each other in Congress. This great deliberative House needs to be that once again."

U.S. Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., has seen more unwillingness to compromise, especially on the part of freshmen lawmakers who were sent to Washington on a platform of shaking up the system.

"Obviously, this year has been partisan, that's for sure, but when we were in the majority, we were equally as partisan," Pastor said. "What's interesting to me about this year is the new members, the 60 or however many there are, have come in with the attitude that 'It's my way or no way.'"

Part of what's going on, said Dahnke of the Institute for Civility in Government, is that "it's easier to be with people who agree with you, easier to talk to people who agree with you. We've reached a place where compromise is a dirty word. It used to be something that was valued, but now it's seen as a weakness."

After the Tucson shootings last year, Dahnke said her group saw a dramatic increase in interest from the public and from politicians and businesses. They wanted to take up the president's call for honest civil discourse. Then, after a time, the interest faded.

"We tend to have short attention spans," she said. "We're also a culture of wanting immediate gratification. We seem to struggle as a society with taking the longer vision or going into something for the long haul, and civility is one of those things that's going to be a long haul."

Still, she said, it's doable. She compares it to the cultural shift in the 1960s over trash and littering.

"Prior to the '60s, people threw trash out their car windows," she said. "Then there was the 'Keep America Beautiful' campaign, and now most people are horrified by littering. That was a cultural shift that was accomplished in a relatively short period of time."

Dahnke said that when someone asked her one day what to do about all of the negative campaign fliers filling a mailbox, "the first thing that came to my mind was send it back. Tell them you don't accept negative ads and you'd like to see a positive one. Explain why you sent it back, just like any other product you're not satisfied with. If a campaign gets enough of those, they'll get the message."

Olson, the ASU professor, said listening is the starting point. No one was listening the day Giffords was shot. They jumped to conclusions about the motive of the shooter almost before the shooter was identified, conclusions that were mostly wrong.

"We should balance speaking with listening," he said. "Civility is as much about listening as it is about speaking. It's acknowledging differences. Having civil dialogues is so important to expose ourselves to real, live people who have differing opinions and find out why they have differing opinions."

People can also hold elected officials accountable for their civility.

"That will have to come from voters and the grass-roots level," Olson said. "I don't think there's going to be any broad coalition of people that holds anyone accountable. It's going to have to be individuals, all of us."

Republic reporter Dan Nowicki contributed to this article.

Civility resources

Arizona State University will host a two-day forum on civility Feb. 3 and 4. The Accessing Civility Forum is hosted by ASU's Hugh Downs School of Human Communication and will include a keynote address by Stephen Littlejohn, who specializes in promoting dialogues among groups and communities. There will be panel discussions on Feb. 3, and on Feb. 4 there will be a Veteran-Civilian Dialogue event on the ASU campus with discussions about the effects of war on both groups. For more information or to register, contact Jennifer Linde at jlinde@asu.edu.

The National Institute for Civil Discourse was organized at the University of Arizona in February in the aftermath of the shootings at the Giffords event. It publishes a newsletter and is funding several research projects about civility in public discourse. Find more information at nicd.arizona.edu.

The Fund for Civility, Respect and Understanding was created by the family of Ron Barber,Giffords' district director, while he was recuperating from gunshot wounds suffered in the shooting. More than 100 volunteers work on initiatives related to civility, including a task force focused on bullying and another focused on mental-health concerns. Find more information at fundforcivility.org.

The O'Connor House project was created after the restoration and relocation of the adobe home of retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The project is now focused on fostering civil discussion and problem-solving surrounding important issues. The home itself is used for some discussions. Find more information at www.oconnorhouse.org.