Spanish Political Communication and Hate Speech on Twitter During the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the polarized discourse West vs. Russia seems to have escalated to levels like those of the so-called Cold War period. The aim of this article, focused on the case of Spain, is to know to what extent the communication of political parties has contributed to such polarization by encouraging hate speech. To this end, the social network Twitter messages by the political parties represented in the Spanish Parliament during the first 60 days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine were analyzed; a total of 3,186 tweets from 67 official accounts of the political parties and their main leaders were coded. The results show that, even though social networks in general -or Twitter in particular- are a favorable environment for the promotion of hate speech, the communication of Spanish political parties is characterized, in general, by political correctness and moderation. It is not in vain that the main indicators of hate speech analyzed (threats, criticism, mockery, or insults) have a very minority presence. The article relates this to other variables such as the tone of the tweets (informative, opinion), the scope (international, national) or engagement (likes, comments), among others. It is concluded that Spanish political authorities have a socially responsible behavior in the analyzed case, reinforcing the importance of public diplomacy to counteract hate speech.