We analysed tweets from five English-speaking Canadian political parties in the year leading up to the 2019 federal election to explore both prejudicial and inclusive rhetoric in relation to Muslim identities on social media. We used structural topic modelling to understand what topics were discussed before moving to a rhetorical approach to analyse how topics were discussed. We identified 10 topics. Seven talked about Muslim groups in primarily inclusive ways, including depicting the positive contributions to Canadian society, creating ideological space for Muslim religious practices and invoking superordinate identities with victims of hate crimes to cultivate solidarity. However, the effectiveness of inclusive rhetoric was sometimes questioned due to omitting the subgroup-specific prejudice faced by Muslims. Prejudicial rhetoric occurred in three of the topics due to the nativist populist PPC party depicting Muslims as a threat to Canadian values, as hostile to people from other religious faiths, and depicting ‘elites’ in society as concealing the ‘true’ information concerning Muslims. The study contributes to understanding how politicians attempt to cultivate minority inclusion/exclusion in multicultural contexts through social media, as well as understanding the rhetoric of nativist populism in Canada and its similarities to other Global North contexts.

中文翻译：

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加拿大政客在 Twitter/X 上的言论：使用结构性主题模型和修辞分析来分析对穆斯林的偏见和包容

我们分析了加拿大五个英语政党在 2019 年联邦选举前一年发布的推文，探讨社交媒体上与穆斯林身份相关的偏见和包容性言论。我们使用结构主题建模来了解讨论了哪些主题，然后再使用修辞方法来分析主题的讨论方式。我们确定了 10 个主题。七人主要以包容性的方式谈论穆斯林团体，包括描绘对加拿大社会的积极贡献，为穆斯林宗教活动创造意识形态空间，以及援引仇恨犯罪受害者的至高身份来培养团结。然而，由于忽略了穆斯林所面临的特定群体的偏见，包容性言论的有效性有时会受到质疑。其中三个主题出现了偏见言论，因为本土民粹主义人民进步党将穆斯林描述为对加拿大价值观的威胁，对其他宗教信仰的人怀有敌意，并将社会中的“精英”描述为隐瞒有关穆斯林的“真实”信息。该研究有助于了解政治家如何试图通过社交媒体在多元文化背景下培养少数族裔包容/排斥，以及了解加拿大本土民粹主义的言论及其与其他全球北方背景的相似之处。