The refugee crisis and the public opinion on Facebook: discoursive strategies of the users’s comments

Journal title MONDI MIGRANTI
Author/s Dario Lucchesi
Publishing Year 2019 Issue 2019/2
Language Italian Pages 19 P. 81-99 File size 250 KB
DOI 10.3280/MM2019-002005
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This contribution intends to deepen the relationship between the mediatization of the migration phenomenon called "refugee crisis" and a way of using Facebook, in order to understand the role of a new public subject in performing discriminatory practices built discursively in the daily experience of living the web. The essay ana-lyzes the comments practice as a discursive construction tool adopted by "ordi-nary" and scattared users, recognized as the protagonists of social media. The re-sults of the study show that despite the majority of the comments analyzed do not spread explicit manifestations of hate speech, they use an argumentative dis-course that seems acceptable and licit, constructed through processes of rationali-zation and legitimation.

Keywords: Refugee crisis; critical discourse analysis; networked publics; users’s comments; social media; online racism.

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  • Argumentative dynamics in representations of migrants and refugees: Evidence from the Italian press during the ‘refugee crisis’ Dimitris Serafis, Carlo Raimondo, Stavros Assimakopoulos, Sara Greco, Andrea Rocci, in Discourse & Communication /2021 pp.559
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Dario Lucchesi, (de) Legittimare la crisi migratoria su Facebook: le strategie discorsive nei commenti degli utenti in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 2/2019, pp 81-99, DOI: 10.3280/MM2019-002005