Arkadiusz Domagała
Media Management, Volume 9, Issue 3, 2021, pp. 451-474
https://doi.org/10.4467/23540214ZM.21.024.13755The paper addresses the issue of the main types of dehumanization in the Polish right-wing portals (wPolityce, DoRzeczy, Republika) and the conceptualization of hypotheses concerning the relationship between framing and the content of comments on the Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans. The premise of the paper is that an article and its comments form a specific entity and in tandem constitute its essence (global sense) together. In the literature review, some types of dehumanization were distinguished: animalization, biologization, objectification, subhumanization, demonization. An insectization was added as an extremely hateful form of de-humanization. Then the role of political hate speech and selected forms of dehumanization in the portals was determined by specially prepared indicators. Comments in the right-wing identity portals like wPolityce and Republika are specific with the noticeable role of insectization and demonization. Subsequently, the dehumanization comments in right-wing portals were compared with the comments on TVPInfo and Gazeta.pl. The latters, in comparison to right-wing portals, turned out to be similar when it comes to dehumanization as such and political hate speech, but contained a limited number of dehumanization forms. Frames based on conflict were consistently used in all the portals. However, the right-wing portals were distinguished by a much greater role of moral frames, which, combined with expressive linguistic forms, constituted strong frames.