VTNC: Discursos violentos no Instagram. Análise crítica de comentários do Jornal Correio da Bahia

Abstract

This dissertation examines violent discourses in digital environments, focusing on comments published on the Jornal Correio da Bahia’s Instagram account. The study departs from the premise that negative evaluations and verbal impoliteness are central discursive practices which, when combined, may constitute hate speech. The corpus, consisting of 260 comments across 15 news posts, was analyzed through the lens of verbal impoliteness theory (Kaul de Marlangeon; Culpeper), the system of appraisal (Fairclough), Critical Discourse Studies (van Dijk; Fairclough; Wodak), as well as Foucault’s and Bourdieu’s contributions on discipline and symbolic violence. The analysis revealed that discursive violence on social media takes multiple forms, ranging from irony to explicit attacks, including insults, stigmatizations, and diffuse victimization. Negative evaluations function as mechanisms legitimizing exclusion, while verbal impoliteness exposes power relations and processes of marginalization. Hate speech was found to circulate against both protected groups (race, gender, religion) and opinion-based groups (political or ideological affiliations), demonstrating how both contribute to the fragmentation of public space. The thesis proposes understanding evaluations, impoliteness, and hate speech as interconnected phenomena that form a broader analytical category: violent discourses. In this sense, it shows how language, far from merely reflecting social reality, operates as a tool for exclusion and the reproduction of inequalities. By highlighting the central role of comments in the digital journalistic ecosystem, this research contributes to rethinking media genres, power dynamics, and the challenges of democratic coexistence in contexts of hyperconnectivity.