Abusive Name-Calling: Representations Around the Term Genocida During the COVID Pandemic

This research aims to analyze how the term genocida, genocidist in Brazilian Portuguese, is used on Twitter by right-wing and left-wing users in the time span between January 1, 2019, Jair Bolsonaro’s first day as Brazilian President, and February 28, 2023, the end of the second month of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s third term. To this end, 149,082 tweets containing the word genocida were collected and analyzed using Lexical Multidimensional Analysis (Lexical MDA) to gain insight into the different ways this term is used and perceived by various users. The analysis revealed nine dimensions signaling variation in the discourses driving the accusations of genocide by individuals with opposing political and ideological perspectives in referred time span. This study contributes to the use of empirical, corpus-based methods to investigate underlying infodemic discourses in social media and, based on empirical evidence, help organizations identify and respond to the infodemic discourse.