![]() ![]() The integrity of Brazil’s electoral institutions is coming under assault, faced with rising distrust of democratic institutions from some of the world’s most avid producers and consumers of social media content. Political misinformation, along with conspiracies about everything from climate hoaxes and COVID-19 to QAnon, has since exploded, both online and off. Bots and algorithms do the rest.įew politicians deploy disinformation better than Bolsonaro, who in 2018 turned to Facebook, WhatsApp and a network of closely connected loyalists to parlay a flimsy, underfunded campaign into a fast track to the presidency. As so often is the case, lies preached with conviction become gospel. This is so much the worse in a country cloven by pious politics, where traditional news outfits with rigorous reporting and editing protocols are demonised. The difference today is that social media, broadband internet and ubiquitous smartphones are helping partisan hit squads – including a so-called ‘ hate cabinet’ set up by one of Bolsonaro’s sons – to weaponize falsehoods and send unfiltered content directly to mobile phones. Silva’s reply: “The Worker’s Party invented fake news.” The narrative flipped in 2014, when Lula’s successor, then incumbent president Dilma Rousseff, ran a campaign spot accusing rising left-wing challenger Marina Silva of plotting to take food from Brazilian dinner plates by shilling for bankers with her vow to grant autonomy to the central bank. ![]() As it turns out, they got it exactly backwards Lula lost the race to market favourite, Fernando Collor de Mello, only to watch his rival freeze national bank accounts and throw the economy into turmoil. ![]() During Lula’s first run for president in 1989, Protestant pastors branded him ‘the devil’, while a rightwing rival warned that he would confiscate private earnings if elected. Look for all sorts of false flags and campaign chicanery as we head to the run-off vote.īrazil is no stranger to misinformation and disinformation, of course. Boslonaro knows he needs more than prayers to win reelection later this month. A third of Brazilians count themselves as evangelicals – a critical demographic in the country’s 156 million-strong electorate – especially among lower-income voters who by their sheer numbers can decide elections. He also governed alongside a vice-president who, while nominally Catholic, frequented evangelical church services and joined a party founded by a Pentecostal order.īut in 2022, civility, fair play, and fact-based public discourse are giving way to post-truth politics and digitally enhanced smears. As president, in 2003, he sponsored legislation that facilitated the creation of evangelical churches. A consummate political pragmatist, Lula has worked hard to keep his pitch ecumenical. These tactics seem to be working, just as they did in 2018, with a sizable share of the evangelical vote migrating from Lula to Bolsonaro in recent months.īut the rumours were lies. False allegations about Lula’s anti-Christian crusade reached 142 million Twitter accounts, reinforcing Bolsonaro's claim that he alone could safeguard the faithful. This campaign has already seen influential politicians and pastors spread rumours on Facebook that Lula planned to shut down churches and persecute their followers. Not only does digital misinformation tarnish reputations and intimidate opponents, it mobilises voters. As both men prepare for the run-off vote on 30 October, the far right’s misinformation machine is expected to shift into overdrive. Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s incumbent right-wing president, and his allies have proven adept at flooding social media and messaging services with lies and conspiracy theories about his challenger, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, popularly known as Lula.įake news spread by social media likely helped Bolsonaro narrow the race in the first round on 2 October, when he performed much better than pollsters predicted. Online disinformation is casting a shadow over Brazil’s presidential election. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |