The Squads relation till ”the Jurassic Jerk” : en retorisk studie om politiskt semantiskt våld på Twitter

Sammanfattning: Twitter took off as a political tool with the 2016 election and it became a space for personal attacks directed to and between politicians. This study focuses on the Squad, four female politicians representing minorities and their use of Twitter in the months before the US election of 2020. The focus is on political semantic violence with Krook’s theory used for analysis. Burke’s identity theory is used in this study to look at the minority perspective. When attacked, the Squad members show good use of rhetorical agency and respond sharply to political violence. ”Identity questioning”, and ”disqualification” often appeared jointly to attack Muslim members of the squad. With identification Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez creates sublime influence as the superstar of the left, and unify the Republicans as the villain they love to hate. The Squad’s most frequent solutions to semantic violence were amplification and solidarity by quoting and retweeting each other or followers.