Discursos de ódio às candidatas mulheres no ambiente digital: os casos das prefeitas mineiras Elisa Araújo, Margarida Salomão e Marília Campos

Abstract

The rise of the female figure in the political realm can be deemed a significant advancement in the 21st century, albeit far from attaining a level of representation that comes close to the power that men still hold in this sphere. The underrepresentation of women in politics is multifactorial. It zooms in on the operation of hate speech as one of these aspects, analyzing negative expressions directed towards female candidates in three successful campaigns: Margarida Salomão (PT), Marília Campos (PT), and Elisa Araújo (Podemos). The study covers the first and second rounds of the 2020 elections, on the candidates' Instagram accounts. Adopting Laurence Bardin's content analysis approach, the study extracted 339 hateful comments from users on the analyzed posts, representing samples of virtual discourse related to political candidacies. Content collection encompassed 900 posts, involving hate comments through a floating reading over the analysis period. The focus was to categorize these texts into subcategories linked to the overarching category of "Hate Speech", addressing aspects such as typology, manifestation, transmission, form, and user profile of this discourse, with the entire process carried out manually. The analysis of target categories and the words or expressions used in hate speech indeed supports the hypothesis that hate speech not only pervades but is also influenced by the gender issue. The identified patterns reflect the intricate interaction between gender bias deeply embedded in society and contemporary digital dynamics. By exploring different categories of attacks, such as political/partisan, sexist/misogynistic, LGBTphobic, stigmatizing, religious aspects, and appearance/social class, it becomes evident that the hostility directed at female political candidates has its roots in gender norms. In this study, the analysis also revealed the presence of incivility and disrespect in the interactions of the candidates on their social media, with variations among them. Elisa Araújo received more incivility comments, while Margarida Salomão and Marília Campos were targets of disrespect. Explicit hate speech was more prevalent than veiled, mainly of a political nature, particularly towards PT candidates. Insults and derogatory language were the most common manifestations of hate, often exacerbated by aggressive emojis. These findings contribute to understanding the growing intersection of politics, gender, and communication. In the contemporary context of social media and the instantaneous spread of information, conducting further in-depth studies on the complex dynamics surrounding hate speech directed at women in the political sphere is essential.