08 Investigating Stance Projection through Social Media: A Discourse-based study of PTI protest and sit-in

Abstract

This research work is an attempt to investigate stance projection through social media regarding Pakistan Tehrik-e-insaf (henceforth PTI) protest in 2014 against the elected government after the general elections of 2013. Our objectives were to analyze the (non) linguistic patterns employed on social media to convey a particular political stance and users feedback. Sixteen considerable posts from the official page of Imran Khan on FB were selected for analysis. Since many historical references were found in the data, Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) of Wodak (2014) was applied in order to explain the historical references as well as the context. In order to check Imran Khan’s political influence over the public the number of likes, comments and shares on the posts before and after the protest were taken into account and a clear difference was noted…