Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE)

It’s social media, stupid! A study of the narrative and discursive elements of Argentinian libertarians on Twitter.

While Argentinian politics have earned a reputation for being unpredictable, convoluted, and chaotic, few case studies can exemplify better the ever-changing nature of this political system than the rise to prominence of the libertarian movement. Libertarians went from being virtually non-existent as a political movement in 2019 to holding 5 congressional seats in 2021 and having a very solid chance of winning the presidential upcoming presidential election. This staggering growth is unrivaled in Argentine political history, which makes it a great opportunity to study the rhetoric and narrative elements that have drawn support to the libertarians. For this reason, I performed a qualitative analysis of the 500 most retweeted tweets of Javier Milei (the face of the Libertarian movement in Argentina) during the 6 months preceding the legislative election in November of 2021 so as to understand what elements of his rhetoric are the ones that have resonated the most with the Argentinian population. I chose the period leading to the 2021 election because it was a turning point for libertarians as it granted them congressional representation, which solidified them as a serious political force. Furthermore, my hypothesis is that the rhetoric used by Milei in his tweets includes a strong emphasis on economics, the widespread use of rude and pejorative language to address his detractors, the promotion of a clear dichotomy between him and what he calls the “political cast,” and sharing and promoting topics that are controversial in nature in order to obtain more media attention and relevance.