Peeking into the Brazilian election campaign on social networks is entering a universe that seems infinite where a fierce battle is waged full of low blows, cute videos, falsehoods and memes. The activity in the groups of supporters of the president and candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, on Telegram, for example, is really fast-paced. overwhelms. The bombardment of short videos praising the “people’s captain” or against his great adversary, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known in those circles as an ex-prisoner, a thief or nine fingers (because he lost a little finger in a work accident), is constant. . And it is interspersed with images of his presidential and electoral activities, of alleged news, of invitations to join the next rallies… or of private comments. Like this one from a certain Zeonpinheiro: “I am discouraged, there is so much evidence that they are going to commit fraud in the elections and nobody does anything!”, echoing a falsehood.
Brazil votes in three weeks to elect a president, governors, renew the Chamber of Deputies and part of the Senate. While the traditional electoral polls give Lula an advantage from the very beginning of this race for the Presidency (he is 11 points behind), in networks his disadvantage is evident: Bolsonaro has 43 million followers on the Internet, triple the number Lula has. They are more, and much more active. Sometimes it seems that the network campaign is a war in which one side has adopted urban guerrilla tactics while the other moves like a classic army. The electoral authorities have allied themselves with the technology companies in the arduous effort that the digital contest is subject to the most basic rules.
This immense universe has been experiencing, for months, a frenetic activity involving tens of millions of Brazilian Internet users who spend hours and hours hooked, reviewing the latest political news on their favorite network while the favorites to win the elections exchange heavy caliber accusations .
Telegram, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp or TikTok are, for example, the main sounding boards for the conspiracy theories that Bolsonaro spreads without evidence about electronic ballot boxes. But they are also—both for him and for Lula—a space to harangue the most faithful and keep the ranks close. The teams of all the candidates have invested heavily in the online campaign, whether to brag about achievements, attack opponents or stir up fear of the opponent’s victory.
The favorite, Lula, is really worried about the fake news, as he has made clear at several of his rallies. He has already gone to court in an attempt to curb disinformation. The idea circulates from mobile to mobile, stirred up by Bolsonarism, that if the leftist wins the elections for the third time, he will close churches, an especially sensitive accusation in a conservative country where lies circulate quickly and for millions of people its main source of information are the WhatsApp messages of their relatives or what they see on networks. Among those helping to stir fear about Lula and the churches are the president’s eldest son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, and other prominent allies of his father. Lula’s denials have failed to discredit the lie.
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The Workers’ Party already suffered in its flesh four years ago the consequences of another lie. Manipulating plans to educate in equality and against homophobia in schools, Bolsonaro convinced millions of people that a progressive government would teach schoolchildren to be gay. It wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter. He fulfilled his mission. Now, Lula has created a 30-second clip titled ‘Don’t believe in ghosts’ to try to disprove the lack of history about the churches.
Bolsonarismo is very comfortable on the Internet. It is their habitat. The unexpected electoral victory of the far-right — a mediocre deputy nostalgic for the dictatorship with an anti-political speech — germinated there four years ago. Since he set his sights on the Presidency of Brazil, Bolsonaro has been a digital candidate, while Lula was until recently rather analog.
As the campaign has entered its crucial phase, Lula’s team and his supporters are getting more comfortable in the virtual world. The former president managed to get another candidate, the federal deputy with the most followers on networks, André Janones, 38, to renounce his candidacy and join his campaign. Janones harangues his more than 11 million followers with an aggressive style that seems to imitate the Bolsonaro clan.
The newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported a few days ago that “Lula has broken Bolsonaro’s hegemony on YouTube and TikTok.” That same day, the Estadão newspaper headlined: “Lula beats Bolsonaro in Google ads and invests 1.3 million reais in YouTube alone.” That’s $250,000. Lula’s supporter groups often emulate that atmosphere of peace and love that the former president preaches in his speeches. The message is, if you want Brazil to return to the happy years of the beginning of this century, vote for Lula. He, like the current president, presents himself as a man of the people. For example, a TikTok video, which later migrated to other networks, shows him recalling his harsh childhood with glassy eyes: “I lived in a room with a kitchen and 13 people. So, I am aware of what this town is going through.”
In any case, Bolsonaro’s advantage is enormous in the digital world. The president moved to Telegram as soon as Twitter suspended the account of former US President Donald Trump because his rules are more lax than those of most platforms. He has a channel with 1.3 million followers where he posts the successes of his Government; the fight in the mud is left to his children, allies or followers of him, grouped in channels with up to 60,000 subscribers.
Thousands of Internet users not only observe but also create, spontaneously or not, content that campaigns or other users circulate. And they create it at a speed that astonishes even specialists. “I am amazed at the speed of the meme industry,” an artificial intelligence researcher confessed to his 15,700 followers on Twitter. Under the phrase, an image that joked with the president’s fondness for weapons (and the gesture of shooting, which has become his trademark) and a comment he made about his alleged sexual potency during a speech on the day of the independence. Next to him, his wife, Michelle.
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