A few weeks before the presidential elections in Brazil, the authorities are trying to limit the avalanche of misinformation circulating on the internet. Although the country is better prepared to deal with fake news than it was during the 2018 campaign, in which Jair Bolsonaro won the presidency, certain types of content and platforms continue to elude control.
Supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro turned out en masse on September 7 to commemorate the bicentennial of Brazil’s independence.
On the beaches of Copacabana, in Rio de Janeiro, a sea of people dressed in green and yellow clutched their mobile phones as they frantically snapped, shared and posted photos.
Sonia, a 50-year-old Brazilian, is one of them. “I share everything I receive, with WhatsApp groups it’s instant,” she says, writing briskly. She has already sent the videos and photos of the day to all of her contacts, even though she only knows a fraction of them personally.
These messaging groups are the main vehicle for fake news in Brazil and consist of an endless stream of threatening messages written in capital letters. “Urgent, Lula is planning the assassination of Bolsonaro,” reads one of them.
“A pro-Lula enthusiast criticizes the Brazilian flag,” notes another. Fake polls predicting Bolsonaro’s victory are also widely circulating: “These voting intentions are updated every four hours. To ensure a non-fraudulent vote, please share this with five friends!”
Since 2018, social networks have been Bolsonaro’s favorite means of communicating with his support base, while traditional media portrays them as an “enemy” that must be defeated.
“The journalists are all corrupt, they are Leninists, Trotskyists,” argue some of the president’s supporters in Copacabana.
A huge banner has been erected on the boardwalk with the headshots of pro-Bolsonaro bloggers and influencers. “The royal press”, read the words written on the fence.
Some of them have more than a million followers on social networks and easily use their online platform to attack journalists from the main Brazilian media outlets. “You are an embarrassment to the country”, is usually a recurring insult against various communicators.
WhatsApp, the main fake news channel
Brazil is the world’s second largest market for WhatsApp, behind India, and the app is one of the main channels for receiving fake news.
Six out of ten Brazilians use the messaging app on a daily basis. A 2019 study commissioned by the Brazilian Congress found that 79% of citizens get their news primarily through WhatsApp, suggesting that the service has become a news source in its own right.
Bolsonaro successfully exploited this during his 2018 campaign. The former paratrooper was at the time on the fringes of politics, a member of a small party with little influence and few resources, so he bet everything on instant messaging services. Photos, memes, video clips, all shared through millions of messages on WhatsApp, served as advertisements for his campaign.
A year after Bolsonaro’s victory, WhatsApp, which belongs to Facebook’s parent company Meta, admitted that some companies had violated the messaging platform’s terms of service and used false numbers to send mass messages with political content. After backlash, WhatsApp has set limits on how many times a message can be forwarded and limits the number of participants in a group.
Four out of ten Brazilians receive disinformation daily. Despite this, the messaging app continues to play an important role in Brazilian politics and has fundamentally changed the way electoral campaigns are conducted in the country.
As the first round of the presidential election approaches, disinformation is spreading more and more. “The amount of false news that circulates is so frequent and worrying that it is difficult to quantify,” explains Fernanda Bruno, professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and coordinator of MediaLab UFRJ.
A study by the Poynter Institute revealed that four out of ten Brazilians receive disinformation every day and that some topics circulate again and again. One of the most widespread false news questions the role of the Superior Electoral Court and the reliability of the electronic ballot boxes in Brazil.
“This questioning of the reliability of the electoral process is similar to the 2020 electoral campaign in the United States (…) Several studies see similarities between the disinformation strategies used in the United States and Brazil,” says Bruno, an expert in social networks.
In Brazil, an investigation by the Federal Police suggests that the president’s own family is behind this disinformation strategy. In 2020, the investigation uncovered the existence of a “hate office,” allegedly run by Bolsonaro’s sons. Their goal is supposedly to spread fake news and attack traditional media outlets and journalists.
The sons of the president who aspires to re-election have always denied the existence of such a bureau. However, they regularly share fake news on their personal Instagram accounts.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, a federal lawmaker, recently posted videos saying that former president and opposition candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his Workers’ Party encourage their supporters to invade churches and persecute Christians in the country.
In this year’s presidential race, both campaigns have resorted to disinformation as part of their communication strategy.
More than 30 complaints for the dissemination of false news have been filed with the electoral authorities since January of this year. Of these, 26 were presented by Lula’s Workers’ Party, against supporters of Bolsonaro and even against the president himself.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party has filed seven complaints against Lula, in particular accusing him of inciting hatred for describing the current head of state as “genocidal.”
Fertile ground for disinformation
Some observers see a hyperconnected Brazil, a country “addicted to the Internet”, which is a kind of regional trend. According to the Kantar Institute, Latin America has one of the highest social media penetration rates in the world and one of the lowest levels of trust in institutions.
News organizations, social networks and government institutions in Brazil have tried to take action to deal with this tsunami of disinformation.
In 2020, the Superior Electoral Court launched a fact-checking platform called ‘Fato ou Boato’ (‘Fact or Rumour’). Information about elections and electronic ballot boxes, as well as verified articles and educational content, can be found on this website.
However, the professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and coordinator of MediaLab UFRJ considers that these efforts are not enough. “Social media platforms still can’t combat all this misinformation, especially from the Meta group,” she says.
Although Facebook has vowed to address the problem of fake news, the international NGO Global Witness recently demonstrated improper moderation on the platform by posting dozens of fake news stories that had been removed.
Fernanda Bruno adds that the Bolsonaro camp has resorted to a new tool. “Telegram is now a new actor for disinformation in this campaign,” she says.
Less monitored than WhatsApp, Telegram has become a new channel for spreading hate speech and calls for violence, adding fuel to the fire of political tensions as the presidential election on October 2 approaches.
Article adapted from its original in English
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