Aggressive language and insults in digital political participation

The paper presents a socio-cognitive model of discredit in political communication by focusing on aggressive language in the web to analyze different types of speech act like insults and evaluative comments. Based on this model a case study is presented on the aggressiveness of a political leader and his followers on social media, trying to disentangle the social and linguistic mechanisms implied in this kind of communicative exchange. Results, by means of a quanti-qualitative methodology, highlight the emerging of a polarization of reactions to a political leader's verbal aggression: The great majority of his followers exacerbate tones but at the same time an "active" minority grows expressing indignation and reflecting on political morality by "divergent" comments.