The Role of Social Network Platforms for Discursive Legitimation: Unveiling Neoliberalism Behind the Discourse on Public Universities

Résumé 0

Social media is increasingly viewed as a game changer in political struggles worldwide. Yet, even as its global reach and impact are now evident, its mechanisms of legitimation of organisations and public policies are still unexplored. This article discusses ‘communicative situations’ (Van Dijk, 2015) extracted from social network platforms concerning the dispute for the (de)legitimation of public universities in Brazil during the campaign and administration of a far-right government. Applying critical discourse analysis, we show the implications of the communication architecture of these platforms for the processes of discursive legitimation. Interactions driven by social identification change the text to be consumed by subsequent users, shifting the debate from technical to identity-based argumentative topos. Our contribution is two-fold: (1) we explore the struggle for legitimacy in the open channels of social media, where the institutional environment cannot suppress deviant opinions and highlight the politics of legitimation; and (2) we demonstrate how actors can legitimise the disinvestment in higher education, before managerial decisions reach universities, through discourses that would not be immediately associated with neoliberalism such as moral conservatism.