=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1351/paper10
|storemode=property
|title=When Minorities' Group Discussions in Social Media Become a Resilient Strategy
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1351/paper10.pdf
|volume=Vol-1351
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/atal/DErricoPC15
}}
==When Minorities' Group Discussions in Social Media Become a Resilient Strategy==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1351/paper10.pdf
When minorities' group discussions in social media
become a resilient strategy.
Francesca D’Errico*, Isabella Poggi** and Rocco Corriero***
*Uninettuno University, Psychology Faculty, Italy
**Roma Tre University, FilCoSpe Department, Italy
***Altran Consulting, Rome
Abstract. The paper presents a brief overview of how social media can influ-
ence minority interactions by focusing at their features. Starting from the no-
tion of “active minority” (Moscovici, 1981) the aim of the study is to under-
stand how participants of a social mediated community face a critical event by
focusing at socio-psychological dimensions that affect their “on line resilience”
and how they promote their “social empowerment”.
At this purpose was performed a quanti-qualitative analysis - lexicographic and
content analysis by means of a software called Taltac (Bolasco, 2013). Results
pointed out different socio-psychological processes (self-definition, trust, emo-
tions and values) before and after critical situation emerging by on line discus-
sions.
Keywords. Active minorities, resilience, political participation, social media
1 Introduction
The link between lack of power and personal resilience in everyday life has been
explored in various social psychology perspectives [1]. The common determinants of
a positive and participative approach to personal and social lack of power is what
Freire defined “process of conscientisation” as development of critical thinking con-
structed by sharing common ideas, practice, and knowledge within a community.
Belonging to a community, sharing knowledge and arguments – mostly in a context
of lack of information – can give the opportunity to perceive a sense of control on the
events and shared problems and thus it can be a source of personal resilience [2].
Within this framework the present work explores what means to be part of a mi-
nority group built through a social media (in particular, a Facebook group) and what
discourses and argumentations are used to face a critical phase in which participants
are involved.
The psico-social notions that contribute to understand this process are the construct
of active minority [3] and its relation with social trust [4].
To be part of a minority group means to be part not only of a social minority in
quantitative terms but also to have a marginal status and lack of power [5]; but a mi-
nority group can actually exert some influence on the majority, though in an indirect
and slow way, because, just thanks to its marginal status, it can adopt an autonomous
and divergent thinking useful to evaluate, judge and discuss the majority’s choices.
In the influence process minorities have to assume coherent, autonomous and
egalitarian behavioural styles; but what are the discourses they construct to solve
problems and at the same time to resist and to face critical events?
What are the characteristics of minority thinking? What arguments do people in a
minority group use, and how do they construct a strategy to induce an opinion change
in their own group or outside of it?
First of all we need to define and distinguish two different types of minority
groups, one belonging as social category to the majority but having less power or a
different opinion on a given topic (ingroup), and the other belonging to a different
social category (outgroup).
This difference looks useful to understand what is the role of trust that members of
minorities assume toward different institutions and what are the social organizations
they trust in in while looking for possible strategies to face negative events.
2 Social mediated communities and their features
Social media and social networking seems to be a new way to construct meanings
and to build new forms of relationships away of or in support to “real life”. From this
perspective social media can be used as the main or unique tool to be in touch by
means of what we can name “social mediated communities”: a virtual togetherness of
members that produce discussions and proposals though not in physical presence or
by regular contacts but sharing a social category [6] and/or place identity [7].
In this sense an interesting dynamics can develop when participants do not person-
ally know each other but they share a common cause or make part of a same social
category – like in the case study presented below, of a Facebook group of young uni-
versity researchers. In this case researchers inform each other by sharing problems in
their virtual group, because they acknowledge a competence to its participants, but
maybe also because they don’t feel confident to their respective academic real con-
texts.
Thus, social mediated communities in this case can be a good way to exchange in-
formation and support during a critical and problematic phase for their work-life that
the researchers face everyday, as in the case of a national competition to access a
university job (see below).
One important feature of group discussion is its structure: either formal or infor-
mal; formal when groups correspond to acknowledged institutions like political par-
ties or formal associations; informal when outside the social network the group is not
acknowledged as such. In this case the network can be the expression of a sponta-
neous majority or minority group joined by common interests or belonging to a real or
virtual social group. Another feature is also relevant: an either vertical or horizontal
structure. The group structure is vertical when it contains opinion leaders that regu-
larly animate a discussion by links or posts, and horizontal when participants demo-
cratically and actively intervene. Lortie-Lussier [8] stated that a minority group with a
leader is more influential, but this becomes a research question when groups live in a
cyber-place.
3 A case study: The Roars (Return on academic research)
Within Italian institutions one of the most conflictual debates concerns University.
In 2013, after a reform of the University proposed in 2011 by the right-wing Italian
Ministry of Instruction Gelmini, professors and universities were evaluated by an
independent agency called ANVUR (Evaluation National Agency of University and
Research), passing from a local evaluation with single competitions between candi-
dates to a professor role-crossing in a national evaluation process of “professor eligi-
bility”. The first round of evaluation started in February 2013, an after one year at
least part of the evaluators’ committees – in December 2013 – finished their work and
published the lists of eligible and non-eligible candidates, with their corresponding
evaluations.
The Ministry of Instruction and University decided that the eligibility would follow
numeric criteria obtained by reference to the so called “medians” obtained consider-
ing the number of publications with the impact factor and citations by the scientific
community. (Only later, when a new Minister came, Francesco Profumo, the more
qualitative criteria were exploited).
In this confusing period – due to novelty and lack of information – within the very
institution of the Anvur Agency an active group of researchers created a Facebook
group and a website called “roars” (Return on academic research”).
They do not know each other but their number grows up very fast and at the time
of this work they count almost 5000 members (7 milions of views and 21.600 com-
ments) who discuss together on the situation trying to find possible solutions together.
3.1. A textual and lexical analysis of Roars
Group discussions have been examined through two methods of analysis. On one
side, they have gone through automatic lexicographic analysis by using TALTAC, a
software for qualitative analysis. On the other side the lexicon obtained through quan-
titative measures was analyzed by means of “concordance analysis” that, like “tradi-
tional” discourse analysis, takes into account the text of all answers to draw recurrent
concepts, topics or semantic areas from them.
The automatic quanti-qualitative analysis was performed on the subjects’ discus-
sions by TalTac (“Lexical and Textual Automatic Processing for Content Analysis”:
[9]), a software for textual data analysis based on a “lexicometric approach”: an ap-
plication of statistical principles to textual corpora. The “textual statistics” [10] aims
to extract the semantic level in a text starting from the list of words obtained by statis-
tical analysis; for example, in the specificities’ analysis, the software extracts auto-
matically a list of significant words obtained by a statistical comparison between sub-
parts of text according to selected variables. From these statistically significant words
we also extract also the list of the sentences where significant words appear in order
to interpret and identify both contextualized meanings (looking also at “negations” or
other unexpected sense of words) and relevant topics.
Here we describe topics and discussions that emerge from the Facebook group of
“Roars” Italian researchers by focusing and detailing the used lexicon both in the first
period (before the national evaluation results) and in the second period (after publica-
tion of first results) to identify the minority’s discourses aimed at facing two critical
periods, one characterized by lack of information and another by negative evaluations
from commissions.
We extracted a corpus by means of Facebook Graph API (Application Program
interface, for advanced users) and we obtained a corpus which counts 31948 (V) oc-
currences with 307682 (N) different words and a high lexical richness index
[(V/N)*100], equal to 10,38%.
The lexical analysis includes some descriptive information, particularly interesting
for the understanding of minority group discussions, like adjective analysis and time
analysis.
3.2. Adjective analysis
We used the dictionary of positive and negative adjectives present in TalTac2 by
analysing the negative index1 to identify the polarization through a positive or nega-
tive lexicon. The index reveals that the corpus shows characteristics of negativity as
high as 71%, that is higher than the reference value for Italia (which is 40% according
to Bolasco [9]).
Looking in depth we see that negative adjectives are very often used in the first pe-
riod concerning the Evaluation Process. We can recognize an adjectival use focalized
on the first period on a sematic area of doubt and highly oriented toward a personal-
ized criterion (questionable discretion, objectionable, poor, questionable, unproduc-
tive, smoky, doubtful, bad);
on the other hand the second period that corresponds to the first publication of con-
crete results focuses on the emotional use of adjectives revealing a sense of unfulfilled
expectations, like scandalous, disconcerting but also shameful, indecent, disgusting,
detrimental, pernicious, laughable, mediocre.
Moreover, the second period shows a very high frequency of the adjective “perti-
nent”, that is used by the committees as the most typical “cause” of negative evalu-
ations. (Actually, one of the most used motivations mentioned by evaluators to deny
eligibility is that a candidate’s publications, notwithstanding their high number and
quality, show a lack of pertinence to the core of the discipline).
3.3. Text Imprinting: Time, mode and person analysis
Time analysis reveals a strong orientation to the present, because out of all verb
frequencies our subjects express time information most frequently in present tense
(82%, as opposed to 11% past and 7% future) mostly in the first period, while in the
second, future time slightly increases (+2%): which in a certain sense can be seen as
determination in planning. The most frequent mode is - as predictable - the indicative;
but also a large use of conjunctive and conditional can be found (79% indicative vs
11% conditional and 10% conjunctive), which is quite high compared to general Ital-
ian use, with conditional and conjunctive around 4% and 7% respectively. This might
1
The index is obtained by extracting all the positive and negative adjectives by means of Taltac
dictionary of adjective and then by calculating the ratio between the total of the negative oc-
currences and the total of the positive ones (tot. Occ. Pos/tot. Occ. Pos*100).
be accounted for by participants’ high level of education that allows the use of com-
plex forms (i.e. hypothetical constructions), but it can be also an index of uncertainty;
researchers in this context argue in search of strategies and possible solutions in a
confused context.
Another characteristic is the conjugation extremely oriented toward the third per-
son (69%) compared to first (26%) and second (5%); what we expected was – given
the dialogical form of discussions – an overuse of the first and the second person; on
the contrary the high frequency of third person might be due to a sort of contraposi-
tion between “me-us” and “they” (researchers vs evaluators), this tendency is present
in the whole Roars’s discussions but increases significantly in the second period.
3.4. The peculiar and characteristic lexicon of researchers as a mi-
nority group
Beside the absolute value of words, the key words or peculiar lexicon [9] are the
over-represented words in the text created by a comparison between the corpus and
the external lexicons of frequency, taken as reference model.2 The measure of the
variance from the reference lexicon is represented by the square deviation3.
If we group the overrepresented vocabulary we find three main recurrent topics
that we can phrase as follows:
1. The evaluation process, its participants and its effects
2. The researchers’ reference values: political and economic processes under-
lying the evaluation process
3. Participation and common proposal
1. The evaluation process, its participants and its effects
This first topic spreads across all participant and all technical aspects of the ev-
aluation:
(reported in a decreasing order, all up to 3,95; p<0.05) qualified, certification,
commissioners, universities, enabled, researchers, competitions, university,
teaching, PhD, commissions, full professor, publications, evaluations, me-
dian, privacy, associate, professor, monographs, band, enabled, recruitment,
candidate, monograph, bibliometrics , article, assessment, commission,
Commission, rewarding, to enable, casual, relevant, candidate, round, quote,
magazines, policy, judgment, publish, publishing, co-optation, meritocracy,
curricula, quotes, results, areas, suitable rejected, suitable, economists, hu-
manistic, accreditation, rankings, merit, discipline, parameters, indicators,
2
In this case we used the stardard Italian, resource in Taltac.
3
standard quadratic deviation: considers significant words overused compared to the lexicon
of reference, we then consider the forms with greater deviation of 3.84 which is the refer-
ence value of a chi square with one degree of freedom (p <0.05).
argue, excellence, merit, selection, progressions, bureaucracy, ministry, er-
rors, extractions, judge, questionable criteria
Within this topic a very negative evaluation of evaluators emerges: in terms of
types of discrediting criteria [11] they are attacked as to their competence
(ignorant) and honesty (clubs, nepotism, barons), finally being described as a
power out of the law (illegitimate) and out of control (insanity, delirium,
boycott, rubbish): recommended, shame, ridicule, crap, baron, distortions,
sawn, nonsense, rubbish unlawful, scandalous, madness, delirium, clubs, fal-
lacious, nepotism, trumpet, questionable, rag, decency, crap, boycott, shame-
ful, embarrassing, ignorant.
1. The researchers’ reference values: political and economic processes under-
lying the evaluation process
The second topic covers the value dimension, with researchers widening their
discourses to the political and economic field.
The term politics for example is a key term to understand the level of trust [4] in
political and economic institutions. The term, that is overfrequent in the first pe-
riod (110 vs 58) corresponds to “bad politics” (cattiva politica): a type of dis-
credit that is mostly oriented on the competence and honesty dimension: “ignor-
ant and corrupted”, “incapable, corrupted and ignorant” [11]. Politicians seem
to be the cause of the present economic crisis and researchers – as is reported in
the concordances below - ask for a “political reinassance” (a new political
framework, political path change, to take universities back to zero, ethical path,
political renovation) as far as politicians did not invest economical resources in
the academic context and expressed their willingness only as “an interested
club” on the basis of “opportunistic reasons” .In the second period the debate on
“politics” decreases (110 f. vs 58 f.), politics is only mentioned as a site in which
to ask for explanations and economic resources in public context (“parliamen-
tary explanation”, “resources”, “political and ethical choice”) or becomes some-
thing to overcome by means of “justice”; moreover researchers now describe the
executive side, represented by one more Minister of University, Maria Chiara
Carrozza, as a powerless minister or sometimes as an absent interlocutor
(“Someone has heard Maria Chiara Carrozza?”) remarking a lack of dialogue be-
tween researchers, professors and government.
Selected Concordance of “Politica” (period 1: freq. 110)
- always
for
opportunistic
reasons
,
the
political
class
began
to
ride
.
We
must
inste-
ad
get
through
this
- This
is
not
a
virus,
but
a
precise
political
will,
a
specific
project
shared
cultural
and
stubbornly
pursued
by
a
club.
- but
the
measure
in
question
is
another
example
of
bad
policy
and
bad
politics
,
we
know
,
only
combines
disasters.
.
.
- The
blame
for
this
economic
crisis
,
ethics
and
morality
is
an
ignorant
and
corrupt
politicians
who
shamelessly
plundered
the
hopes
of
young
people
- I
expect,
however,
that
will
be
conquered
by
force
(see
actions
)
rather
than
with
politics
- But
I
do
not
seem
to
remember
any
political
force
that
has
never
explicitly
raised
the
question
of
which
model
of
nation
we
want
- I
would
like
this
question,
which
is
not
technical
but
political
,
came
out
from
the
corridors
of
becoming
part
of
the
political
debate
- The
problem
is
that
when
a
question
is
considered
"technical"
policy
stop
to
dis-
cuss
- only
if
there
is
a
significant
policy
shift
.
When
we
become
a
decent
country
politi-
cally
,
I
said
decent
,
not
perfect.
Selected
Concordance
of
"
Carrozza
"
(period
2:
freq
.
39)
- The
answer
is
not
there,
Carrozza
is
showing
as
a
great
political
with
a
small
p
.
- Carrozza
is
there
by
virtue
of
the
Holy
Spirit
and
knows
neither
the
school
nor
the
university
's
problems
- From
Carrozza
never
came
a
word.
.
.
Poor
things
.
.
.
And
what
figures
are
you
talking
about?
Let’s
organize
together
- Can
you
see
the
Minister
Carrozza
who
"
abolished
"
a
procedure
in
the
race
?
:
)
- I'm
sorry,
but
I
think
the
response
of
minister
Carrozza
is
in
many
ways
exemplary
and
necessary
- Carrozza
must
stop
talking
nonsenses
The description of this more systemic and general discussion comes from the
peculiar lexicon with the overrepresented words (reported below).
(reported in a decreasing order, all up to 3,95; p<0.05) : Research, Euro, Euro-
pean funds, salary, incentives, budget, salary, economists, cuts, gross loans,
Europeans, money, shots wage, virtuous, financing, Italy, culture, quality,
university, history, respect, scientific merit, science, person, future develop-
ment, the U.S., background, announcements, scientists, international, inter-
nationalization, standards, republic, government, accountability, justice, in-
novation, proposals, development, expertise, regulatory, rector, opportuni-
ties, needs, nobel, initiatives resources
3. Participation and common proposal
The third topic is the “researchers’ participation and collective-cooperative ac-
tivism”.
Recurring terms are linked to petition, rights (ricorso, diritti) and shared in-
formation to face a common problem or strategy and possible future solution
taken together (we-ness).
Actually recurrent verbs are ones of doing, changing, working, (fattivi,
volizione, potere) especially in the form of second plural person (we can, we
stay, we want, we must, we do).
Within this topic we can include words close to the idea of things to do to-
gether in order to react and to be protected from injustice (up to 3,95 square de-
viation) like possibly, hope, example, can, could, may, plan, possibility, partici-
pate, can, I can, discussion, work, best, you, join, proposal, community, work,
joint strength, our, us, network, compare, decide, change, change, future.
This area stands for the idea of resorting to a social resource to face a nega-
tive evaluation in a hierarchical and competitive context. In this connection, ar-
guing on the web seems to be a way to give support and share information and at
the same time it creates a secure place to discuss and find an exit strategy. Key
words to understand this central topic are in this case rights, justice (as “super-
partes” institution) and juridical words, seen as tools to defend themselves. (law,
human rights, justice, judiciary, self-defense, rules, extension, rules, terms,
rules, just, recourse)
Selected Concordance of “possiamo” (period 1: freq. 39)
- we
want
and
we
can
support
our
desire
for
an
efficient
country
- Then
they
win
grants
because
they
are
good,
we
can
do
with
their
network.
.
.
however,
the
theme
of
'article
linked
towards
resolving
the
dispute
- Then
we
dissent
from
his
work
as
a
minister
(and
I
strongly
disagree),
Selected
Concordance
of
"possiamo"
(period
2:
freq.
54)
- We
can
no
longer
sit
idly
by
and
just
complain
amongst
ourselves
otherwise
we
will
be
accomplices
in
this
disaster
- Yes,
we
need
to
move,
we
can
not
suffer
a
judgment
that
will
have
much
influ-
ence
on
our
lives.
The
important
thing
is
to
participate.
- We
can,
however,
recourse
of
and
make
use
of
our
rights
- only
we
can
find
arguments
to
convince
the
'public
opinion'
s
investment
in
re-
search
is
useful
and
far-sighted
- simply
share
what
I
figured
out
why
I
think
so
we
can
clarify
each
other's
ideas.
3.5 Verb lemmas
The characteristic analysis of verb lemmas (with square deviation starting from
60,00; while the reference point is 3,95), i.e. all verbs converted in their infinitive
forms, highlights four types of verbs. The first one, that we can name verbs of “par-
ticipation and social activism”, goes from concrete actions to acts of group coordina-
tion and action planning. This type increases in the second period, after publication of
the first results (s.d. > 3,95; agentic verbs: power, succeed, find, finance, change,
grow, participate, decide, earn, win, think, criticize, share, fix, work, show, get, take,
raise, reward, predict, test, enable, risk, protest, overcome, invoke, invest, organize,
enhance, reject, groped, challenge, boycott, create, propose, betting, solve, encour-
age, defend, prepare, rebalance, reform, excel, advertise, charge, rethink, take, fight,
convince, fix, hold, secure, contribute, equate, try again, cooperate, prevent, respond
to, influence, compel, start over, create, expand, promote, renew, resist, aspire, grow,
to dream, to associate, to dare, enhance, fruit, flip, recover, trigger, coordinate, pur-
sue, rebuild, program, address).
Another interesting topic concerns verbs of on line group interaction, indicating
that one of the main goals of the “ROARS” group is “reasoning” and arguing to-
gether:
Sometimes, for this minority, arguing is an instrument for the interpretation of acts
or laws and for reasoning together on the future, on the basis, usually, of posted arti-
cles, links or news.
(s.d. > 3,95) Understand, evaluate, discuss, click, refer, extrapolate, feel, add, to
argue, to consider, recommend, center, disagree, implement, clarify, argue, protest,
agree, infer, to reiterate, comment, confirm, restate, reason, verify, doubt, imply,
specify, reflect, stress, indicate, infer, say, correspond, establish focus, to infer, to
emerge, to intervene, to allow, to mention, simplify, differentiate, declare, issue, fo-
cus, excuse, introduce, monitor, communicate, examine, to assert, to aim.
Another useful function of online interaction in this group, even if less represented
compared to the other two, is the “expression of emotions”, especially negative emo-
tions that are primarily acknowledgeable by the negative effects both on the economic
and on the self-image side, and more in general on the researcher’s life.
Quite representative of a first type of expressive verbs are those mentioning nega-
tive actions and their effects on life and emotions.
(with square deviation starting from 15,00; while the reference point is 3,95): Dis-
please, fear, err, block, complain, waste, scream, regret, shame, suicide, insult, scut-
tle, beat, abuse, spitting, damage, freeze, hit, brandish, point, demolish, slay, crazy,
break, fumble, pick up, prejudice, cringe, break, subdue, aging, affect, scrounge up,
derail, deter, insult, graze, vomiting, mock, live
Positive emotions are less frequent; in the first period we find verbs like “hope”,
auspicare, in relation to positive expectations, but in the second period the coexist-
ence of verbs like “promote, enforce, continue to, thank, help, share, suggest, support,
be grateful, agree, resolve" highlights that positive emotion are only felt in presence
of the potential support of the group composed by other active researchers in the same
critical period.
This function of the Roars Group is evident when we extract “entities”4 or complex
expressions (marked in bold) in the corpus that are clear requests for help, usually
followed by a very large variety of answers:
"Guys, I have a problem and I would like to share it here hoping that someone
would suggest a way to solve it. (...) Has anyone had similar experiences and can
help me? "
4
Fragments Obtained through semantic concordance by means of so called Entity re-
search (Taltac allows to extract phrases or fragments which present sequences or semi-
sequences with two or more words that represent complex queries; Bolasco, 2013):
4 Conclusion
One aim of this study is highlighting how social media can be a tool for active mi-
nority groups to overcome some critical situations. Social networking is a place
where people can share information, discuss on common problems and/or on political
and economic situations, find shared strategies to adopt and finally develop group
discourses and personal narratives. In minority groups arguing on line seems to cor-
respond to a way to develop a group thinking by knowing the other member’s point of
view, by analysing together either macro-themes (political and economic situation) or
micro-experience (personal experiences like rejection from the national evaluation,
legal action). In this sense discourses can be seen as an active participation but also –
beyond the institutional contexts where they live – they can facilitate the so called
“process of conscientization” and critical consciousness [12] at an individual and
group level. Social media – here, in “Roars”, the social mediated communities - are a
space where discussions are freely faced by constructing a “social knowledge” fa-
voured by the fact that they can “de-traditionalise the public sphere” allowing the
coexistence of different points of view and dissenting voices and opinions by means
of horizontality and egalitarian access [1].
The work presented is based on the Italian group of researchers “Roars” before and
after a national evaluation process aimed at their possible enrolment as professor
within Italian University.
Roars, as a minority group lacking any consulting or decisional power, before the
evaluation results discuss all possible scenarios in absence of institutional informa-
tion, especially analysing the political and economic present and past situation. After
the extraction of peculiar and characteristic lexicon [9] the concordance analysis
points out that this political tendency of discussion becomes a request to be listen to
by the Minister, who is felt as distant and absent (“someone has heard Carrozza?”),
and a more general distrust emerges toward a political class described as “ignorant,
unqualified and corrupt”.
This lack of trust toward the political class and institutions [4] seems to be one
motivation that lead Roars members to be active within the group by having peer
discussions; in their “participation and common proposal” we can find a sense of trust
in the belonging to a larger group, we find a “we” often opposed to “they”. Within
this topic the juridical part, with all the possible tools usually thought and constructed
together, seems to be the “neutral” institution to turn to face personal and group in-
justices.
This exploratory analysis is a way to understand psychosocial processes within mi-
nority group, with a particular attention to social trust. It helps us to better understand
trust dynamics by means of social media discussions: we have seen that in critical
phases if there is a lack of trust toward “political” institutions, minorities discuss for a
common solution or for a guarantee which helps them as super-partes institution (i.e.
the case of justice). This can be a resilient strategy for a minority, but further studies
can go more in depth and analyse further acts of “social commitment” [4] to over-
come negative and uncertain phase.
From the use of social media some methodological issues also emerge concerning
the analysis of argumentation on line. The retrieval of on line discussions give the
researcher a very large material to analyse and to understand, sometimes in a real-
time situation. So before analysing in depth this big data and material obtained from
social media a possible route to better understand and to identify argumentations in
discussions is to identify main topics by means of a lexicographic approach [9; 10]
through imprinting analysis of lexicon (time, mode and person analysis by extraction
and frequencies aggregation), peculiar and characteristic analysis supported by con-
cordances and entity research in the text.
From this methodological point of view, this study is a way to connect a lexico-
graphic approach to the specific need of studying argumentation on line. Future works
could explore the minority groups’ argumentations used by their members to “em-
brace” each other from an instrumental and emotional side in a critical situation and
in a position of lack of power.
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