Verbal Aggression as an Indicator of Xenophobic Attitudes in Greek Twitter during and after the Financial Crisis

Maria Pontiki, Maria Gavriilidou, Dimitris Gkoumas, Stelios Piperidis


Abstract
We present a replication of a data-driven and linguistically inspired Verbal Aggression analysis framework that was designed to examine Twitter verbal attacks against predefined target groups of interest as an indicator of xenophobic attitudes during the financial crisis in Greece, in particular during the period 2013-2016. The research goal in this paper is to re-examine Verbal Aggression as an indicator of xenophobic attitudes in Greek Twitter three years later, in order to trace possible changes regarding the main targets, the types and the content of the verbal attacks against the same targets in the post crisis era, given also the ongoing refugee crisis and the political landscape in Greece as it was shaped after the elections in 2019. The results indicate an interesting rearrangement of the main targets of the verbal attacks, while the content and the types of the attacks provide valuable insights about the way these targets are being framed as compared to the respective dominant perceptions and stereotypes about them during the period 2013-2016.
Anthology ID:
2020.lr4sshoc-1.4
Volume:
Proceedings of the Workshop about Language Resources for the SSH Cloud
Month:
May
Year:
2020
Address:
Marseille, France
Editors:
Daan Broeder, Maria Eskevich, Monica Monachini
Venue:
LR4SSHOC
SIG:
Publisher:
European Language Resources Association
Note:
Pages:
19–26
Language:
English
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2020.lr4sshoc-1.4
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Maria Pontiki, Maria Gavriilidou, Dimitris Gkoumas, and Stelios Piperidis. 2020. Verbal Aggression as an Indicator of Xenophobic Attitudes in Greek Twitter during and after the Financial Crisis. In Proceedings of the Workshop about Language Resources for the SSH Cloud, pages 19–26, Marseille, France. European Language Resources Association.
Cite (Informal):
Verbal Aggression as an Indicator of Xenophobic Attitudes in Greek Twitter during and after the Financial Crisis (Pontiki et al., LR4SSHOC 2020)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2020.lr4sshoc-1.4.pdf