Polarized democracies: unveiling distinct perspectives on the concept of Democracy in Brazilian social media political conversations

Résumé

This study investigates how different concepts of democracy emerge from social media conversations and how these definitions may be influenced by polarization, opinion leaders, and discursive strategies adopted. Our goal is to unveil the dynamics of polarization and discursive strategies in legitimizing these contrasting viewpoints. For this, it presents research on Twitter (now X) conversations about democracy, based on a case study of the event called "Letter for Democracy" in Brazil. Analyzing a corpus of 545,940 tweets, we use social network analysis and connected concept analysis to investigate the polarization around the concept of democracy and its associated discourses. Our findings show distinct understandings of democracy, results of a highly polarized structure and different discursive strategies such as political polarization, populist rhetoric, and the use of disinformation. These findings contribute to the literature as they underscore the importance of understanding threats to democracy amidst a digital polarized environment.