Research report With different words: The arguments that can empower an e-minority Francesca D'Errico Uninettuno University, Psychology Faculty, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 39, 00186 Rome, Italy article info Article history: Received 20 November 2015 Received in revised form 29 February 2016 Accepted 1 March 2016 Keywords: E-minority Participative networks Social media interaction Argumentative moves Quality discussion Empowering social media abstract Crossing two different research fields, the socio-psychological and the linguistic one, the present work aims at exploring what means to be part of a minority group built through a social media. In particular it will deepen the argumentations used by its followers before and after a very critical phase, and mostly if their discourses entail positive effects in terms of empowerment. The main hypothesis of this study is that the empowerment process of a minority, seen as a form of re-appropriation of individual or col- lective efficacy, can be constructed by means of the quality of discussion and then through its arguments. The case is represented by “Roars”, an active Facebook group of Italian researchers born after a very criticized reform of University. The linguistic analysis of Roars's group aims to understand their discur- sive and argumentative processes, and to state if they can develop some forms of empowerment. The results show how Roars change their rhetorical moves passing from presumptive and biased to “normative” argumentations, thus improving the quality of discussions and also their level of empowerment. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction “Resisting means creating, creating means resisting.” (Hessel, 2011) The famous phrase of Hessel reported above provides dignity to the resistance strategies of people, groups and minorities without power. From a psycho-social point of view in fact minorities create, by means of their divergent e and thus creative - way of thinking, conversion processes, especially when they are based on coherent stances (Moscovici, 1981). In particular, lack of power and personal resilience in everyday life has been explored in various social psychology perspectives. The common determinants of a positive and participative approach to personal and social lack of power are what Freire defined “process of conscientisation” (1970): the development of critical thinking constructed by sharing common ideas, practice, and knowledge within a community (Campbell & Jovchelovitch, 2000). Belonging to a community, as well as sharing knowledge and arguments e mostly in a context of lack of information e can give the opportunity to perceive a sense of control on the events and shared problems and thus it can be a source of personal resilience (Garmezy, 1991). Within this framework the present work explores what means to be part of a minority group built through a social media (in particular, a Facebook group), and what argumentations are used to face a critical phase in which participants are involved, particularly if their discourses entail positive effects in terms of individual, interpersonal or political empowerment. The psycho-social notion that best contributes to understand this process is the so-called active minority (Moscovici, 1981), that refers not only to social minorities in quantitative terms but also to those having a marginal status and lack of power (Mucchi Faina, Pacilli, & Pagliaro, 2013). In the influence process, minorities have to assume coherent, autonomous and egalitarian behavioural styles; but what are the argumentations that help them to construct possible solutions and at the same time to resist and to face critical events? What are the characteristics of minority arguing and then mi- norities' thinking? What arguments do people in a minority group use, and how do they construct a strategy to firstly empower themselves? First of all we need to define and distinguish two different types of minority groups, one belonging to the majority (as a social category) but having less power or a different opinion on a given topic (ingroup), and the other belonging to a different social cate- gory (outgroup). This difference looks useful to better contextualize the present work, where we outline the argumentative and empowering E-mail address: f.derrico@uninettunouniversity.net. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.03.007 0747-5632/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Computers in Human Behavior 61 (2016) 205e212