‘Pure Evil!’: framing by devil terms and the MAGA insurrection [articol]

Abstract

The article concerns the impact framing by devil terms in social media has on democratic deliberation. Daniel Kahneman and Richard Weaver have shown how terms with powerful emotional connections, what Weaver calls god-terms and devil-terms, give the readers/audience cues as to how to react to any given situation. We have applied this theoretical framework to discourses in communities supportive of Donald Trump’s election fraud narrative. Our results show how powerful framing terms were used in order to convince supporters that they faced existential threat from a de-facto coup perpetrated by a powerful and evil elite. We also discuss how such strategies may be countered in order to preserve democracies.