Participatory society has often been regarded positively, frequently associated
with the ideals of a more democratic and equitable civilization. Nevertheless,
the idea of participation may act as a two-sided phenomenon in terms of
empowerment, especially in the realm of social media platforms. This dichotomy
is evident as increased participation often leads to a rise in offensive and
divisive language, reflecting the challenging balance between open dialogue and
the maintenance of respectful discourse on these platforms. In this work, we
comprehensively examine the use of offensive language during a highly
polarizing event on two online platforms, Twitter and Whatsapp. In our study,
we focus in the 2021 Chilean Presidential Elections, a political event where
candidates from two opposing parties faced each other. Using a state-of-the-art
model and all available labeled data in literature, we determine the level of
offensive language across platforms and parties. Our results show that Twitter
messages contain, on average, up to 15% more of offensive language than
Whatsapp.