Miguel Ángel Benítez Castro
Centre: Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas de Teruel
Institution: University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza (Spain)
Position: Researcher from the University of Zaragoza
E-mail: mbenitez@unizar.es
Phone: 978618123
Profile: Ver
Personal statement
I obtained my PhD from the University of Granada in 2013, with a thesis that proposed a detailed corpus analysis of the formal, syntactic-semantic and textual features of so-called capsule nouns in different oral and written genres of the English language. This initial focus on the formal structure of discourse and the phenomena of lexical cohesion subsequently led me to investigate the discursive construction and representation of major social phenomena. Based on Systemic-Functional Linguistics, and always from a team and interdisciplinary perspective, my research over the last ten years has focused on analszing the functioning of persuasive discourse and evaluation (emotion and opinion) in the press, in oral accounts of trauma and abuse, in populist public discourse and in jihadist extremist online propaganda. My participation in seven research projects over the last ten years (PID2021-125788OB-I00; P18-FR-5020; A-HUM-250-UGR18; FFI2016-79748-R; FFI2011-25453; HUM2007-60107/FILO; 2022-1-ES01-KA220-HED-000086521) has allowed me to work alongside top-level researchers in artificial intelligence, psychology, political science, and security (among other disciplines). This involved, among other aspects, in the development of tools aimed at detecting extremist discourse online, and currently, disinformation processes. I joined BIFI in 2023 to contribute to the Digital Science research line.
Researcher profile identity
Currently, I am a EURAXESS R3 researcher. I work mainly on the detection and analysis of opinions and emotions in different types of texts and genres (e.g. interviews, social media posts, online propaganda, etc.) in order to shed light on processes of persuasion, manipulation, recruitment, trauma and disinformation (among others). Currently, as leader of one of the work packages of a European project (2022-1-ES01-KA220-HED-000086521), I am working on the design of educational materials aimed at combating and countering hate speech and exclusion that prevail in today’s Europe.
Why my research is important
The findings of this type of research are not limited to the field of linguistics, but offer security forces, mental health professionals and educators (among others) inventories of communication strategies that can help prevent, combat and treat the often harmful effects that certain mono- and multimodal communication processes can have on people. In this regard, it is worth highlighting the work that, together with Catalan security forces and social psychologists, we have been carrying out in recent years to detect the radicalisation processes of the members of the cell responsible for the August 2017 attacks in Barcelona.
Know more about me and my research
– https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=wx8VaDcAAAAJ&hl=es
– https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Miguel-Angel-Benitez-Castro
– Twitter/X: @MABenitezCastr1
– Instagram: @mabenitezcastro
