Rhetoric, Political Ideology and the Peace Process in Colombia: A Twitter® Analysis

María Idaly Barreto-Galeano, Iván Felipe Medina-Arboleda, Sonia Zambrano-Hernández, José-Manuel Sabucedo-Cameselle, Amalio Blanco-Abarca and Éric Maurice Lair

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2021, vol. 44, issue 11, 920-937

Abstract: An ethos of violence based on political ideologies aiming to delegitimize an adversary is a psychosocial barrier to solving lasting conflicts, such as in Colombia. Beyond the signing of a peace agreement, the cessation of political violence implies modifying the complex symbolic dynamics constructed by various opposing actors to legitimize acts of direct violence. This research evaluates whether a new rhetoric that encourages the development of a peace culture has replaced the ideological rhetoric of various social actors involved in dialog and negotiations to end the armed conflict between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP). To this end, a textual analysis of the ideological rhetoric disseminated through Twitter® by several actors in Colombian society was conducted to identify the expressions used (semantic analysis) to legitimize or delegitimize those involved in the conflict in the last negotiation year (2016). The outcome indicates that the agenda of topics revolves around peace, and although the ideological differences between the negotiation table (i.e., the government and FARC-EP) and the opposition party are evident in the published messages, all the actors are striving to develop a rhetoric of tolerance and coexistence.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1057610X.2019.1615256 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:uterxx:v:44:y:2021:i:11:p:920-937

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/uter20

DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2019.1615256

Access Statistics for this article

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism is currently edited by Bruce Hoffman

More articles in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().