Discursive conflicts, actors, and Twitter polarization: the dismissal of Minister of Education Abraham Weintraub from the Bolsonaro administration

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the dimensions that involve the discursive conflicts between groups of political supporters in the public debate on digital platforms. Through the case study of the conflict that developed on Twitter around the dismissal of Weintraub from the Ministry of Education in Bolsonaro's government, the article presents an analysis that highlights three dimensions of the discursive conflict: (a) the chronology of behavior of discursive interaction networks related to the issue; (b) the issues that were raised; and (c) the profile of the more active users. The results show that the discursive conflicts are dominated by 1) the replication of original messages (retweets), 2) the intersection of themes that involve the leading personalities in and the context of the conflict, and 3) the great activity of non-institutional profiles in the dissemination of messages, associated with their ideological positioning.