Hate Speech on Twitter: Vox in the Catalan Parliamentary Elections

Abstract

The Spanish far-right Vox party ran for the first time as a candidate for the Catalan parliamentary elections in February 2021. This paper analyses the party's political discourse on Twitter during the Catalan parliamentary election campaign in order to assess whether the degree of dialectical confrontation of their messages can exceed the limits of democratic debate. The results reveal how this far-right party's inflammatory messages, which seek to insult its political opponents, ultimately foster an undemocratic environment that turns Vox's political rivals into its enemy, driving social polarisation and a discourse of hatred towards individuals defending other ideologies or parties. Ultimately, it is intended to add that political-ideological nuance for future research that surpasses traditional hate speech —such as those based on criteria such as race or sex— and the suitability of Twitter for the proliferation of the latter.