Legitimation and delegitimation of state violence on social media: the case of University of Cauca

This thesis examines the legitimation and delegitimation of state violence on social media in the case of a student protest at the University of Cauca. To this end, it examines 8421 tweets in order to unravel the specific cultural references and discursive strategies that can be used for legitimizin...

Full description

Autores:
Tutkal, Serhat
Tipo de recurso:
Doctoral thesis
Fecha de publicación:
2023
Institución:
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Repositorio:
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Idioma:
eng
OAI Identifier:
oai:repositorio.unal.edu.co:unal/83681
Acceso en línea:
https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/83681
https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/
Palabra clave:
University of Cauca
State violence
Legitimation
Nonviolence
Student movements
Critical discourse studies
Universidad del Cauca
Social media
Estudios críticos del discurso
Redes sociales
Violencia estatal
Legitimación
La no violencia
Movimientos estudiantiles
No violencia
Medios de comunicación de masas
Movimiento estudiantil
Nonviolence
Mass media
Student movements
Rights
openAccess
License
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0 Internacional
Description
Summary:This thesis examines the legitimation and delegitimation of state violence on social media in the case of a student protest at the University of Cauca. To this end, it examines 8421 tweets in order to unravel the specific cultural references and discursive strategies that can be used for legitimizing or delegitimizing the state violence. It conducts qualitative analysis of all tweets by using the general categories of authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and dehumanization. Located within the Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), this research especially focuses on the specific mechanisms of delegitimizing social actors, in order to be able to develop discursive strategies that can allow for their re-legitimation. Conceptualizing the 'legitimacy' and 'illegitimacy' of violence as a fluid state instead of a fixed description, this thesis suggests that legitimation and delegitimation of violence are continuous processes, which means that the legitimacy or illegitimacy of a violent act can be changed by making cultural references and using adequate discursive strategies to the context. Since political violence can be legitimized only if other alternatives of conflict resolution or peaceful coexistence are shown to be unlikely, legitimizing political violence usually requires delegitimizing the possible peaceful means of conflict resolution. The four main categories employed in this research and numerous discursive strategies based on them can result in negative other-presentation, which can legitimize exercising violence toward the negatively presented social actors. By examining these strategies, the aim is to find ways that can allow for promoting nonviolence in the Colombian context.