Toxicity and discursive violence against women federal deputies on Twitter

Abstract

The paper discusses how social media platforms have acted to legitimize and spread rather than manipulate toxic discourses, particularly with regard to gender-based violence against women in Brazilian politics. Our research seeks to understand: (1) which discourses emerge targeting Brazilian federal deputies (with mandates between 2019 and 2022) and their possible effects; and (2) whether there is a difference between toxic speeches directed to women deputies on different sides of the political party spectrum. To this end, we have analyzed 500,000 tweets published in June 2022 that directly mentioned female deputies in their last term. Through a qualitative-quantitative analysis, we identified two large categories of toxic discourses: one related exclusively to the figure of women, i.e., gender-based violence, and the other relation to the political group of which those women are part, that is, party-political nature attacks.

Keywords
discursive violence; toxicity; federal deputies; Twitter