Kierowcy tirów w cieniu hejtu: jak kampanie w mediach społecznościowych mogą zmieniać postawy społeczne wobec kontrowersyjnych zawodów?
Truck drivers in the shadow of hate: How can social media campaigns change public attitudes towards controversial professions?

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to investigate how a shift in narrative within a social media campaign can influence audience reactions and public attitudes toward a low‑prestige profession, using the two‑part campaign by the Adar brand about truck drivers as a case study. The analysis compares user responses to two campaign videos published on YouTube, with particular attention to sentiment, dominant emotions, thematic focus, language style, and the presence of verbal aggression (vulgarisms, hate speech, irony). The research material consisted of 3,382 user comments collected using the YouTube API. The comments were automatically analyzed in a Python environment using the GPT‑4 language model (OpenAI), which categorized each comment across seven analytical dimensions based on a predefined classification protocol. The analysis was quantitative and comparative in nature. The findings indicate that the narrative shift--from a general presentation of the truck driving profession to a personal and emotionally charged family context, set against the backdrop of online hate--led to a noticeable increase in emotional and personal engagement from commenters. While the second video elicited more empathetic and experience‑based responses, it also generated a higher proportion of comments containing vulgar language and hate speech. This underscores the ambivalent nature of emotionally intense social messaging, which can foster both solidarity and polarization. The study confirms the potential of social media campaigns to serve as tools for stereotype reduction and to foster social dialogue.

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