A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF U.S. FAMOUS PEOPLE’S TWEETS ON THE OVERTURN OF ROE V. WADE (1973)

Abstract

The overturn of Roe v. Wade (1973) in 2022 has triggered a rally as to abortion rights in the States, flooding both the news, online discussions and debates. On the day of the decision, 80 U.S. famous people instantly reacted through their tweets. This paper qualitatively analyzed these tweets using Fairclough’s CDA framework. Three prominent patterns were found regarding these people’s political ideologies on abortion rights. First, the sole pro-life tweeter maintained that pro-choice were only hypocrites, and the constitution text was the most legitimate reference for the Supreme Court’s work. Second, the other 79 tweeters’ ideologies were identified as convergent in that: (1) pro-life was grounded in blind religious faith and filled with conservative hegemony; (2) anti-abortion was associated with resistance to democracy, justice and social progress; (3) voting for the Democratic would be the solution to the problem; and (4) the celebrities’ advocacy of pro-choice was righteous. Third, the representation of pro-choice ideologies among these 79 tweeters were found to be differentiated due to the tweeters’ various backgrounds and expertise. Many tweets also used paradoxical argumentation such as the idea of democracy that excluded pro-life individuals. The discussion of the research findings suggested that the participants’ short expressions on Twitter not only proved ineffective for compelling social mobilization in such a case like this but also reinforced polarization as the mediated perspectives overtly showed intolerance.