Solidarity Building in Antagonistic Political Discourse on GhanaWeb

The advancement of technology has seen the growth of online news platforms where users can interact and share their views in the comments section. The comments section, therefore, has become a site for the expression of divergent views, leading to linguistic practices such as verbal attacks. This study sourced data from GhanaWeb, an online news platform that focuses on sociopolitical occurrences in Ghana, to demonstrate how users rely on insults, alongside other strategies like endorsement, irrelevancy claims, ill-wishes and unpalatable questions to create enmity with the out-group and build solidarity with the in-group. It was also found that there were cases where two participants or commenters who seem to share the same viewpoint were challenged by a third participant. This study makes a fair contribution to the emerging research on the linguistic practices on online communication platforms and highlights areas for further inquiry.