Manipulation Techniques in Denialist Propaganda During the COVID-19 Pandemic
A Computer-generated Discourse Analysis Approach
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/vh.30.1.101-121Keywords:
manipulation, denialism, anti-vaccine, persuasion, discourse analysisAbstract
Persuasion and its different forms are present in a variety of discourses that reach us in different ways, and it is one of the most studied topics in communication. In this paper, we focus on a form of persuasion that has obtained special relevance due to the social and health crisis caused by COVID-19: the discourse of denial. Social media represents one of the spheres of language use in which this discourse has been able to expand quite comfortably. The paper thus uses a compilation of a set of publications extracted from different media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in order to analyse the persuasive mechanisms used by denialist groups. Through this analysis, it will be shown that these strategies are similar to those used in advertising and politics, as their aim is to convince the receiver by appealing to emotional factors such as fear or uncertainty. It is precisely in these two areas that we find many studies on persuasion and it is from these two areas that the theory will be applied to our analysis; in terms of denialist discourse, this is a novel application.
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