Argumentative alliance building in Reddit interactions: the debate on racial quotas

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2236-4242.v39i1p125-149

Keywords:

Alliance, Practical argumentation, Polylogal interaction, Racial quotas

Abstract

Affirmative action policies aim to address historical inequalities and promote the inclusion of socially marginalized groups, such as the Black population, through measures like university admission quotas. However, their adoption still raises controversies in the public sphere (Munanga, 2001; Silva, 2020). In this context, the present study seeks to investigate how actors form alliances to defend policy proposals related to racial quotas and to criticize alternative proposals, analyzing how this dynamic contributes to the polarization of the debate. The corpus consists of an interaction on Reddit concerning a real case of racial quotas at the University of São Paulo (USP) in 2024, collected on April 1, 2024. The study is grounded in theoretical frameworks on polylogal argumentative interactions (Aakhus & Lewiński, 2017; Mohammed, 2018) occurring in digital spaces (Azevedo, Gonçalves-Segundo & Piris, 2021; Gonçalves-Segundo, 2025b; Massanari, 2015), including argument construction (Gonçalves-Segundo, 2024) and agreement establishment (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 2005 [1958]; Gonçalves-Segundo, 2025a) aimed at defending shared courses of action (Gonçalves-Segundo, 2025a) within alliances formed among participants in the interaction (Bruxelles & Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 2004), under an integrative perspective of argumentation (Gonçalves-Segundo, 2020, 2025a). The results indicate that alliances in favor of racial quotas are grounded in agreements based on justifications related to historical reparation and the fight against structural racism, whereas opposing alliances question their legitimacy and defend socioeconomic quotas as an alternative course of action.

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Author Biography

  • Sandra Gomes Rasquel, University of São Paulo

    Doutoranda em Letras pela Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil.

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Published

2026-04-30

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Vol. 39 No. 1 (2026): Digital Discourse – Contemporary Challenges and Problems

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Copyright (c) 2026 Sandra Gomes Rasquel

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RASQUEL, Sandra Gomes. Argumentative alliance building in Reddit interactions: the debate on racial quotas. Linha D’Água, São Paulo, v. 39, n. 1, p. 125–149, 2026. DOI: 10.11606/issn.2236-4242.v39i1p125-149. Disponível em: https://revistas.usp.br/linhadagua/article/view/242283. Acesso em: 9 may. 2026.