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

Authors

Abstract

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.

Author Biographies

Maurilio Luiz Hoffmann da Silva, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

PhD candidate in Communication at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). Masters degree in Communication and in European Union Studies. Researcher fellow at MIDIARS - Laboratory of Research in Media, Discourse and Social Network Analysis.

Raquel Recuero, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul e Universidade Federal de Pelotas

PhD. Associate Professor at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil and at the graduate program of communication at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Her research is centered on social media and politics with a focus on online discourse and gender-based violence.

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Published

2025-12-09

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 41 (2025): Estudos em Comunicação

Section

Artigos

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Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported License.

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