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DIGITAL IMPOLITENESS

Digital Impoliteness Corpus
(CID)

A corpus of comments posted on digital platforms and classified as verbal attacks against women in politics and the judiciary in Brazil and Germany.

The Impolidez Digital project brings together corpora of comments posted on digital platforms to investigate verbal attacks, impoliteness, and other forms of hostility in public debate. The first corpus, the Digital Impoliteness Corpus (CID-1), was compiled during the initial phase of the project and contains comments directed at three female members of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and a Supreme Federal Court Justice, as presented in the video below. Since then, we have expanded the collection to include further studies and episodes in Brazil and Germany.

The corpora are available separately on Sketch Engine. A link to each corpus is provided at the end of its brief description. We also provide a combined corpus containing comments classified as aggressive across the different studies, organised into subcorpora and presented in the final section below.

To request access to one or more corpora, contact the team at impolidezdigital@gmail.com, provide the email address associated with your Sketch Engine account, and specify which corpora you would like to access. Once access has been granted, you can use the links provided on this page.

Digital Impoliteness Corpus (CID-1): Initial Phase

CID-1 was developed as part of the project “The Digitally Mediated Discourse of the Far Right in Brazil and Its Effects on the Rights of Women and the LGBT+ Community”, funded by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq; grant no. 404672/2023-0).

This initial version contains comments posted in response to YouTube videos involving members of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies Sâmia Bomfim, Duda Salabert, and Érika Hilton, and Supreme Federal Court Justice Cármen Lúcia. The comments cover the period from each video’s publication date to May 2024, when the data were extracted. The corpus comprises 6,512 comments and 136,643 words. Further information, including details of its composition and studies drawing on it, is available in Portuguese and English.

Link to CID-1, available once access has been granted: https://ske.li/712

Link to the automatically translated English version of CID-1: https://ske.li/impol_en

Publications drawing on all or part of CID-1: Portuguese and English.

How to Cite

OLIVEIRA, Ana Larissa; MIRANDA, Monique; DRINÓCZI, Tímea; SANTOS, Isabel; FERREIRA, Daniel; MICHELETTI, Adriana; PERINI-LOUREIRO, Giovana; LOPES, Paulo. CID – Corpus de Impolidez Digital. 2024. Available at: https://www.impolidezdigital.com/corpus. Accessed: [insert date].

Reactions to an Episode Involving Benedita da Silva and Carla Zambelli

Another corpus compiled by the Impolidez Digital project contains comments posted following an episode that took place before the P20 Women Parliamentarians’ Meeting in July 2024. During a social media livestream, Brazilian federal deputy Carla Zambelli complained that she had not been chosen to speak at the event and referred to fellow deputy Benedita da Silva, who had been selected, as “Chica da Silva”. The remark attracted widespread public attention and prompted accusations of racism.

As detailed in the accompanying documents in Portuguese and English, this corpus contains two subcorpora with aligned Portuguese and English versions: one comprising attacks directed at Benedita da Silva and the other comprising attacks directed at Carla Zambelli. Comparing these two sets of comments can support investigations into how verbal attacks intersect with race, gender, and political positioning, among other issues.

Link to the bilingual Benedita-Zambelli Corpus, organised into subcorpora and available once access has been granted: https://ske.li/beneditazambelli

Publications drawing on all or part of the Benedita-Zambelli Corpus: Portuguese and English.

How to Cite

MIRANDA, Monique; OLIVEIRA, Ana Larissa; SANTOS, Isabel; MARQUES, João Pedro; MARÇAL, Fernanda. Corpus Benedita-Zambelli. 2025. Available at: https://www.impolidezdigital.com/corpus. Accessed: [insert date].

Reactions to the Nomination of Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf

The Impolidez Digital collection also includes a corpus of comments about Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, a legal scholar nominated in 2025 for a seat on Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court. Her nomination triggered intense political and public controversy, accompanied by online attacks against her. The vote was postponed, and Brosius-Gersdorf subsequently withdrew her candidacy.

The comments in this corpus support research into how views attributed to a woman nominated for a prominent public institution are debated, challenged, and, in some cases, turned into personal attacks. Further details about the episode and the corpus are available in the accompanying documents in Portuguese and English.

Link to the Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf Corpus, with comments aligned in German, English, and Portuguese, available once access has been granted: https://ske.li/corpus_fbg

Publications drawing on all or part of the Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf Corpus: Portuguese and English.

How to Cite

MIRANDA, Monique; OLIVEIRA, Ana Larissa; DO AMARAL, Marcelo Parreira. Corpus Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf. 2025. Available at: https://www.impolidezdigital.com/corpus. Accessed: [insert date].

Combined Digital Impoliteness Corpus

The Combined Digital Impoliteness Corpus brings together 7,867 comments classified as verbal attacks across three studies conducted within the project: 6,512 from CID-1, directed at federal deputies Sâmia Bomfim, Érika Hilton, and Duda Salabert, and Justice Cármen Lúcia; 1,162 from the Benedita-Zambelli Corpus, directed at federal deputies Benedita da Silva and Carla Zambelli; and 193 from the Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf Corpus, directed at the German legal scholar.

The comments retain information about their source corpus, the public figure targeted by the attacks, the social media platform, and the post or video under which they appeared. These metadata allow users to search the entire collection or select subsets by episode, public figure, platform (YouTube, Instagram, X/Twitter, and TikTok), and source post. In CID-1 and the Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf Corpus, videos are identified by the prefix YT followed by their video ID. In the Benedita-Zambelli Corpus, the original post labels, such as YT1, IG1, TW1, and TT1, have been retained. Further details are available in the documents provided in the individual corpus sections.

The entire collection has aligned Portuguese and English versions, allowing users to consult the comments alongside their corresponding translations. The 193 comments about Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf also include the German originals, aligned with their translations into both languages.

Link to the Combined Digital Impoliteness Corpus, with comments aligned with their corresponding translations, available once access has been granted: https://ske.li/cid_ger1

How to Cite

PROJETO IMPOLIDEZ DIGITAL. Corpus geral de ataques verbais: CID-1, Benedita-Zambelli e Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf. Version 1.0, 2026. Available at: https://ske.li/cid_ger1. Accessed: [insert date].

If you use only one of the subcorpora, please also consult the citation provided in the corresponding section.