HARD POLITICIANS. ANALYSIS OF AGGRESSION IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON TWITTER

Abstract

It is known that the entry of Twitter into the political arena poses many problems for political communication. The spontaneity that characterizes the platform, combined with the impulsiveness and verbosity of some participants, makes some of the messages bad for the politicians’ image. In this paper, using discourse analysis tools, we will attempt to create a typology of hateful discourse on Twitter, and also try to shed light on the benefits and risks that accompany hate speech. The article concludes that many politicians still prefer to manage their own Twitter accounts, and this is perhaps the main reason for the emergence of angry messages. As for the core role that Twitter has acquired in politics and for politics, one might think that politicians have chosen it as the new communication network because its brevity obscures the lack of content of its discourse. Today’s politics, with a lot of image and little ideology, with a lot of noise out of nothing, has found a good ally on Twitter.