Analysis of violent and hate speech in two Facebook groups against the candidacy of Rodrigo Londoño 'Timochenko' to the presidency of Colombia

• Main Author: Lida Ximena Tabares Higuita
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad Rey Juan Carlos 2018-10-01
• Series: Index Comunicación
• Subjects: Discurso violento; discurso de odio; proceso de paz colombiano; interacción en Facebook
• Online Access: http://journals.sfu.ca/indexcomunicacion/index.php/indexcomunicacion/article/view/417

The Peace Agreement signed between the Colombian Government and the Farc guerrilla in 2016 allowed this group, now as a political party, to nominate candidates in the parliamentary and presidential elections held in the first half of 2018. This has been strongly criticized by a group of Colombians, who have rejected it in physical and virtual spaces, to the point of forcing the new party to cease its campaign in public spaces. This article tries to reflect these reactions in two groups of Facebook, identify the communicative elements used in the interaction and analyze if there is a violent or hate speech, based on a digital ethnographic observation and content analysis. To this end, publications linked to the announcement of the candidacy for the presidency of Rodrigo Londoño 'Timochenko', to the presidency of Colombia, were reviewed in November 2017, which allowed identifying factors that favor the appearance of violent and hate speech, and the lack of interaction and use of communication tools of the digital environment in this type of message.