Keyword – ad hominem

Juhász, Vanessza – Bene, Márton:

The online argumentation of political parties and their leaders during the 2022 parliamentary election campaign

Based on the 2022 legislative election campaign, this paper studies how frequently and in what ways certain elements of political debate occur in political actors’ social media communication. We analysed 2,441 Facebook posts issued by parties and party leaders prior to the election. Our findings suggest that political actors engage in opinionated discourse on social media and largely focus on public policy issues. They rarely rely on factual reasoning, but ad hominem fallacy plays a significant role in their Facebook posts. However, other argumentation mistakes occur rarely in their communication. Different actors evince largely identical patterns, but opposition parties and politicians tend to take a more argumentative stance compared to coalition parties and politicians.

Keywords: 2022 parliamentary election campaign, ad hominem, argumentation, Facebook, Frans van Eemeren, political debate, pragmadialectics, social media