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Article published In:
Hate Speech in Online Media
Edited by Anton Granvik, Mélanie Buchart and Hartmut Lenk
[Internet Pragmatics 6:2] 2023
► pp. 219–238

When your neighbor becomes a threat

How COVID-19 divided a community in online discussions

ORCID logo | University of Helsinki

This paper analyzes how a series of online COVID-19-related discussions in a public social media group divided a community consisting of part-time and permanent residents. The group is a general discussion forum aimed at the inhabitants of a relatively small Finnish municipality. The discussions took place in March-April 2020, and the recurring topic was the potential danger posed by holiday home owners, who permanent residents feared would bring the virus with them. The discussions escalated quickly, and several threads went on simultaneously for some weeks. In the discussions, an ingroup and an outgroup were instantly formed. The material is analyzed from the point of view of categorization analysis, hate speech and metapragmatics. I examine the course of the discussions, and topics such as responsible behavior, health, and money. In addition, I also examine the metapragmatic utterances and sequences, which steadily increased during the discussions, and take a critical stance toward them. The research method employed will be qualitative content analysis.

Keywords: COVID-19, categorization, hate speech, metapragmatic utterances, holiday home owners
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Categorization, hate speech, and metapragmatic utterances
    • 2.1Hate speech
    • 2.2Metapragmatic utterances or metacommentary
  • 3.Material and method
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1The course of the discourse
    • 4.2Categories: The vulnerable ingroup and the affronted outgroup
    • 4.3Hate speech or just angry words?
    • 4.4Disbelief, discontent and disgust: The Metacommentary, i.e., metapragmatic utterances and sequences
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00095.pak
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