A Comparative Analysis of Offensive Discourse in the 2021 Chilean Presidential Campaign on Twitter and WhatsApp

Participatory society has often been regarded positively, frequently associated with the ideals of a more democratic and equitable civilization. Nevertheless, the idea of participation may act as a two-sided phenomenon in terms of empowerment, especially in the realm of social media platforms. This dichotomy is evident as increased participation often leads to a rise in offensive and divisive language, reflecting the challenging balance between open dialogue and the maintenance of respectful discourse on these platforms. In this work, we comprehensively examine the use of offensive language during a highly polarizing event on two online platforms, Twitter and Whatsapp. In our study, we focus in the 2021 Chilean Presidential Elections, a political event where candidates from two opposing parties faced each other. Using a state-of-the-art model and all available labeled data in literature, we determine the level of offensive language across platforms and parties. Our results show that Twitter messages contain, on average, up to 15% more of offensive language than Whatsapp.