Comparative analysis of sentiments towards different stigmatized groups on social media platforms in Spain

  1. Martín Oller-Alonso 1
  2. Carlos Arcila-Calderón 1
  3. Javier J. Amores 2
  4. Patricia Sánchez-Holgado 1
  5. Maximiliano Frías-Vázquez 1
  6. William González-Baquero 1
  7. Marcos Gomes-Barbosa 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Salamanca
    info
    Universidad de Salamanca

    Salamanca, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02f40zc51

    Geographic location of the organization Universidad de Salamanca
  2. 2 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
    info
    Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

    Santiago de Chile, Chile

    ROR https://ror.org/04teye511

    Geographic location of the organization Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Journal:
Cuadernos.Info

ISSN: 0719-3661

Year of publication: 2025

Issue: 61

Pages: 117-141

Type: Article

DOI: 10.7764/CDI.61.87210 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Cuadernos.Info

Abstract

Social media platforms have become critical spaces for the dissemination of negative, toxic, intolerant, and discriminatory sentiments and messages targeting stigmatized minority groups defined by their ethnicity, religion, culture, origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation. This article presents a sentiment analysis applied to Spanish-language messages on X, Instagram, and Facebook about migrants, Muslims, Jews, the LGBTIQ+ community, and the Roma population in Spain. The SentiStrength tool analyzed 523,374 messages containing keywords related to these groups. The results show that Instagram and Facebook promote a more favorable environment, with slightly positive latent sentiment averages towards these stigmatized communities. In contrast, X is characterized by a higher prevalence of negative sentiments in the messages analyzed overall. In terms of comparisons between groups, the most negative average sentiment was found in messages related to Jews and migrants, particularly on X. Conversely, the messages in which the most positive latent sentiment average was found related to the Roma community and LGBTIQ+ groups

Bibliographic References

  • Agrawal, K., Tello, P., Rulli, M., & Martelotte, L. (2023). Inclusión de grupos discriminados en los procesos políticos y electorales en América Latina (Inclusion of discriminated groups in the political and electoral processes in Latin America). International IDEA. https://doi.org/10.31752/idea.2023.69
  • Allington, D., Hirsh, D., & Katz, L. (2022). The Generalised Antisemitism (GeAs) Scale: A Questionnaire Instrument for Measuring Antisemitism. Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, 5(1), 38-46. https://doi.org/10.26613/jca/5.1.99
  • Amores, J. J., Arcila-Calderón, C., & Blanco-Herrero, D. (2020). Evolution of negative visual frames of immigrants and refugees in the main media of Southern Europe. Profesional De La Información, 29(6). https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2020.nov.24
  • Amores, J. J., Arcila-Calderón, C., & Stanek, M. (2019). Visual frames of migrants and refugees in the main Western European media. Economics & Sociology, 12(3), 147-161. https://doi.org/10.14254/2071-789X.2019/12-3/10
  • Arcila-Calderón, C., Blanco-Herrero, D., Frías-Vázquez, M., & Seoane-Pérez, F. (2021). Refugees welcome? Online hate speech and sentiments in Twitter in Spain during the reception of the boat Aquarius. Sustainability, 13(5), 2728. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052728
  • Arcila-Calderón, C., Amores, J. J., Sánchez-Holgado, P., Vrysis, L., Vryzas, N., & Oller Alonso, M. (2022a). How to Detect Online Hate towards Migrants and Refugees? Developing and Evaluating a Classifier of Racist and Xenophobic Hate Speech Using Shallow and Deep Learning. Sustainability, 14(20), 13094. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142013094
  • Arcila-Calderón, C., Sánchez-Holgado, P., Quintana-Moreno, C., Amores, J. J., & BlancoHerrero, D. (2022b). Hate speech and social acceptance of migrants in Europe: Analysis of tweets with geolocation. Comunicar: Media Education Research Journal, 30(71), 21-34. https://doi.org/10.3916/C71-2022-02
  • Arcila Calderón, C., Sánchez Holgado, P., Gómez, J., Barbosa, M., Qi, H., Matilla, A., Amado, P., Guzmán, A., López-Matías, D., & Fernández-Villazala, T. (2024). From online hate speech to offline hate crime: The role of inflammatory language in forecasting violence against migrant and LGBT communities. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11, 1369. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03899-1
  • Banerjee, S. (2023). Dataset for identification of queerphobia. Github. https://github.com/ShivumB/Dataset-for-Identification-of-Queerphobia
  • Bar Shuali, J. & Herzog, B. (2023). El silencio frente al antisemitismo: Un estudio sobre la capacidad de actuación de las empresas de redes sociales frente a los discursos de odio antisemitas (Silence in the face of anti-Semitism: A study on the ability of social media companies to respond to antisemitic hate speech). Federación de Comunidades Judías de España.
  • Blanco-Herrero, D., Amores, J. J., & Sánchez-Holgado, P. (2023). Migrants and Refugees in Southern Europe Beyond the News Stories: Lessons to be Learned. In Arcila-Calderon, C. & Veglis, A. (Eds.), Migrants and refugees in Southern Europe beyond the news stories: Photographs, hate, and journalists’ perceptions (p. 101-150). Lexington Books.
  • Capdevila, A., Moragas‐Fernández, C. M., & Josep Maria Grau Masot, J. M. (2022). Far‐Right Populism Online: Did VOX’s Community Reproduce the Party’s Discourse During the April 2019 Campaign? Media and Communication, 10(4), 155–169. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v10i4.5704
  • Congreso de los Diputados. (2023, March 8). Informe de la Subcomisión para el estudio de un Pacto de Estado contra el Antigitanismo y por la Inclusión del Pueblo Gitano (Report of the Subcommittee for the Study of a State Pact against Antigypsyism and for the Inclusion of the Roma People). Boletín Oficial de las Cortes Generales, Serie D, Núm. 587. https://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L14/CONG/BOCG/D/D_0587.PDF
  • Cortés, I. (2021). Hate Speech, Symbolic Violence, and Racial Discrimination. Antigypsyism: What Responses for the Next Decade? Social Sciences, 10(10), 360. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/10/360
  • Costello, M., Hawdon, J., Ratliff, T., & Grantham, T. (2016). Who views online extremism? Individual attributes leading to exposure. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 311-320. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.05.033
  • Díaz Hernández, M. (2020). Discurso de odio en América Latina: Tendencias de regulación, rol de los intermediarios y riesgos para la libertad de expresión (Hate speech in Latin America: regulatory Trends, Role of Intermediaries and Risks to freedom of expresión). Derechos digitales. América Latina.
  • Ekman, M. (2019). Anti-immigration and racist discourse in social media. European Journal of Communication, 34(6), 606-618. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323119886151
  • Fundación Secretariado Gitano. (2023). Informe Anual Discriminación y Comunidad Gitana (Annual Report Discrimination and the Roma Community). Fundación Secretariado Gitano. https://informesdiscriminacion.gitanos.org/informes/2023
  • Garner, S. & Selod, S. (2015). The racialization of Muslims: Empirical studies of Islamophobia. Critical Sociology, 41(1), 9-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920514531606
  • González-Baquero, W., Amores, J. J., & Arcila-Calderón, C. (2023). The Conversation around Islam on Twitter: Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis of Tweets about the Muslim Community in Spain since 2015. Religions, 14(6), 724. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060724
  • Highfield, T. & Leaver, T. (2016) Instagrammatics and digital methods: Studying visual social media, from selfies and GIFs to memes and emoji. Communication Research and Practice, 2(1), 47-62. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2016.1155332
  • International Organization for Migration. (2018). World Migration Report 2018. https://publications.iom.int/books/world-migration-report-2018
  • Kaskeleviciute, R., Knupfer, H., & Matthes, J. (2024). Who Says “Muslims Are Not Terrorists”? News Differentiation, Muslim versus Non-Muslim Sources, and Attitudes toward Muslims, Mass Communication and Society, 27(1), 101-124. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2023.2268097
  • Matamoros-Fernández, A. (2017). Platformed racism: The mediation and circulation of an Australian race-based controversy on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Information, Communication & Society, 20(6), 930-946. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1293130
  • Mulhall, J. (2021). (Ed.). Antisemitism in the digital age. Online antisemitic hate, holocaust denial, conspiracy ideologies and terrorism in Europe. Amadeu Antonio Stiftung. https://www.amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/antisemitismin-the-digital-age.pdf
  • Narváez-Llinares, L., & Pérez-Rufí, J. P. (2022). Fake news y desinformación sobre migración en España: prácticas del discurso xenófobo en redes sociales y medios online según la plataforma Maldita Migración (Fake news and disinformation about migration in Spain: practices of xenophobic discourse in social networks and online media according to the platform Maldita Migración). Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico, 28(4), 841-854. https://doi.org/10.5209/esmp.82845
  • Observatorio Antisemitismo. (2022). Informe sobre el antisemitismo en España 2022 (Report on antisemitism in Spain 2022). https://observatorioantisemitismo.fcje.org/wp-content/ uploads/2023/07/INFORME-ANTISEMITISMO-EN-ESPAN%CC%83A-2022.pdf
  • Olmos Alcaraz, A. & Politzer, M. (2020). ‘Dibujando islamofobia’: islam y prensa en España a propósito un análisis de los atentados a Charlie Hebdo (Islamophobia in the Spanish Press: An analysis of the media coverage of the Charlie Hebdo attacks). Estudios sobre el mensaje periodístico, 26(1), 253-263. https://doi.org/10.5209/esmp.67304
  • Papacharissi, Z. (2015). Affective publics: Sentiment, technology, and politics. Oxford University Press.
  • Thelwall, M., Buckley, K., Paltoglou, G., Cai, D., & Kappas, A. (2010). Sentiment strength detection in short informal text. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(12), 2544–2558. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21416
  • Valdez-Apolo, M. B., Arcila-Calderón, C., & Amores, J. J. (2019). El discurso del odio hacia migrantes y refugiados a través del tono y los marcos de los mensajes en Twitter (Hate speech against migrants and refugees through the tone and frames of Twitter messages). Revista de la Asociación Española de Investigación de la Comunicación, 6(12), 361-384.
  • van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford University Press.
  • van Dijck, J., Poell, T., & de Waal, M. (2018). The platform society: Public values in a connective world. Oxford University Press.
  • Vilares, D., Thelwall, M., & Alonso, M.A. (2015). The megaphone of the people? Spanish SentiStrength for real-time analysis of political tweets. Journal of Information Science, 41(6), 799-813. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551515598926
Data source: Dialnet