The harassment of the (O)other in the context of 2018´s presidential election

Abstract

During the period of the 2018’s presidential election in Brazil a movement of polarization was observed, especially during the second round, which concentrated in the opposition between the groups that supported the candidates Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) and Fernando Haddad (PT). In this way this article aims to approach in which ways the polarized groups built representations around the opposite group and established a relationship with the (O)other in the discursive space of Twitter, since it was a space of wide spreading and (re)production of the polarized discourses. Is presented as corpus excerpts from posts that circulated on Twitter from October 7^th to 27^th, 2018. Besides, the Discourse Analysis, especially through discourse studies in French perspective, is taken as theoretical and analytical device, in order no work with the language and imagetic materiality of the utterances. The qualitative and interdisciplinary study seeks support in the methodological perspective of digital ethnography, in the way of conceiving and studying the polarized communities that surround the social media. The groups called as “communists” and “bolsominions”, according to the representations created in this period, established a relation of harassment with the (O)other, presenting sayings that offended, delegitimized and, in many moments, removed the (O)other of their position as a subject. The defense of an “absolute truth” by the groups contributed for the emergency of a discourse violence, using swearwords and ad hominem attacks. During the 2018’s election the (O)other was put as an “outsider”, taking, in many moments, the position as a “strange”, “abominable”.