One topic that has not come out of the mouth of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) is the perceived fragility of electronic voting machines as a way to delegitimize the Brazilian electoral process. In the same vein, this issue also dominates far-right Telegram groups.

Leticia Cesarino, Professor of Anthropology and Graduate Program in Social Anthropology (PPGAS) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), studies Bolsonarist behavior in groups in depth and points out: [assuntos] more generally, the programs and narratives that stand out in the set of groups and channels that we analyze should not necessarily refer to a direct accusation of electoral fraud, but to the delegitimization of institutionality that guarantees the outcome of elections. “.

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“And it is the ultra-right, allies of President Jair Bolsonaro, who dominate this environment. On these more underground platforms like Telegram, the right is completely dominated. The way they market themselves as content producers has to do with revealing the truth that the media is hiding. And that’s how they win the loyalty of their followers,” he adds.

The idea of ​​”revealing the truth” also sets the tone for Bolsonaro’s actions. Last July, the retired captain promised to present evidence of alleged electoral fraud during the 2018 elections. The incumbent then said that he would in fact have won the election in the first round. However, shortly thereafter, the “truth” revealed turned out to be nothing more than old and false claims that electronic voting machines had completed voting for the PT number in absentia at the voters’ choice.

Check out the interview with Leticia Cesarino below.

Brazil de Fato: What has changed since the 2018 presidential election to date regarding the production and dissemination of disinformation on social media in Brazil, especially considering the extreme right?

Letizia Cesarino: The machine runs at full speed but looks different than it did in 2018 when it had an expansive nature. After she hit [a máquina] succeeded in expanding beyond those segmented groups and influencers more rooted in Bolsonaris. Mostly through WhatsApp one can see a very large capillarity of the campaign.

This year, when it comes to re-election, with four years in office, a pandemic, Lula’s return to the race, Bolsonarism is having a hard time. The ecosystem was shrinking in size compared to what it was in the campaign. But apparently, they “replenish” the electoral machine itself, just like in 2018.

Fake news and misinformation reveal how the Bolsonaro government is handling the pandemic / Reproduction Arte IQC

Now this model of using the machine has changed not only to increase the electoral base, but also to destabilize the very legitimacy of the elections. This has always been the case, including with this issue of electoral fraud. That was always one of the narratives, but at that moment it didn’t matter because Bolsonaro won and he had a lot of support.

This year, the agenda has taken shape and, at least according to the data we work with the Telegram platform, it is undoubtedly the dominant agenda this year. You [assuntos] more generally, the programs and narratives that stand out in the set of groups and channels that we analyze should not necessarily refer to a direct accusation of electoral fraud, but to the delegitimization of institutionality that guarantees the outcome of elections. .

On September 7, for example, the question of a health passport came to the fore, but in a certain way crossover with a program of electoral fraud. There were rumors that unvaccinated people would not be allowed to vote. So even if it’s not their agenda [naquele momento]The topic has been discussed since at least September.

The Internet environment in which fake news is produced and distributed seems to belong to the extreme right. The left, on the other hand, does not seem to have power over this territory. That’s all? Can one also find the industries left behind this production and distribution?

These more underground platforms like Telegram are dominated by the all-out right wing, it’s on a different scale. This is the right niche, and it will remain so, because they operate there. The political left has an interface with the mainstream media that the right, from MPs down, does not. They are nowhere to be found, except on the Internet. The niche belongs to them. So no matter how much the left grows, it remains their niche.

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The way they market themselves as content producers, pseudo-journalists, is about revealing the truth that the media is hiding. It makes no sense for them to move away from this, because this is how they attract consumers, declaring that after the Internet, the media will never again be able to hide anything. And that is how they earn the loyalty of their followers. This is typical of the media. On the left, not so much. There is one or another conspiracy channel, but they cannot be compared in scale.

Can the left somehow resist this dominance?

You can greatly increase the occupancy, but it is difficult to reach their level without crossing certain ethical and even legal boundaries. They will always be at the forefront, because there is no limit to distortion and sensationalism, because it is based on efficiency. If the media goes viral, the content will follow suit and the trend is for the sensation to go viral. This is the differential of these media in relation to the mainstream media.

But it is important to fight at least to take advantage of this advantage that the far right has. The left is improving, but it’s a matter of organicity. The left needs organic channels. It doesn’t make sense for PT to have a great communications strategy to speak the language of the internet if it doesn’t have an organic network of creators.

Bolsonaro is strictly following the strategy adopted by the American far right, insisting on charges of voter fraud that resulted in his election as president in 2018 / Antonio Augusto/Ascom/TSE

The organic web got its right thanks to this normal circulation. The issue of threats is very important because it keeps people connected beyond the issue of information disclosure. Now it’s possible to have it on the left, and it should be too. This disclosure bias can be exploited further.

In 2018, WhatsApp was a very important platform for the dissemination of fake political and election news. Has it changed somehow? Can we name important new platforms for this network of production and dissemination of disinformation?

Changed, changed a lot. The platforms that were important in 2018, WhatsApp and Facebook, remain important, but the ecosystem as a whole has diversified. We have, for example, TikTok, which, although not big, has investments from Bolsonaro. Instagram itself, which is not often used for political purposes, is associated with bolsonarism, with misinformation about early treatment, alternative sciences and anti-vaccination programs.

See also: Understand why Bolsonarism is trying to feed the contest to electronic voting machines

Bolsonarism has diversified into different platforms. For example, Telegram is one of the most underground, with very closed and radical groups. We are trying to consider the relationship between these more closed segments, which we call refracted, with a more superficial segment, such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which, by all indications, are more important than Telegram in terms of capillarity.

This investment by Bolsonaro in TikTok is clear. Youtube has the nature of producing fake news, while WhatsApp has the nature of broadcasting. Come to think of it, what is the role of TikTok?

TikTok already has specialized content. But it’s usually disguised content that sits in that gray area between entertainment and political propaganda. The network has this profile, but quantitatively it is still not important. Now TikTok videos are also being distributed on WhatsApp, so there is traffic too.

What about other more alternative platforms used by the extreme right?

This is another clearer pattern that didn’t exist in 2018: alternative platforms like Gettr, Rumble, BitChute and others that are copying other platforms.”inclusion” [dominantes] how they began to tighten content moderation, ban channels, ban content from Twitter itself. So they started moving to these alternative platforms, which they didn’t have in 2018.

Blogger Allan dos Santos, an ally of President Bolsonaro, is under investigation in Brazil for spreading fake news / Reproduction

One thing that has changed is that the content feels more spontaneous, in the sense that in 2018 this style of campaign or this language for politics was new. So, at first, the content was closely related to what the press called the “hate office”, which we still don’t know exactly who is behind it. Four years later, the president’s own supporters organically included this working modecopying yourself.

And then there is another model that already existed in 2018 but is becoming more and more obvious, and that is the monetization issue, mostly related to YouTube. So for many of these activists, it really became a kind of entrepreneurship. There is even a certainmainstreamingfrom this right. They are already colonizing media niches within the public sphere itself.

You were talking about YouTube. What is the size and importance of Youtube today in creating and spreading misinformation?

Telegram circulates a lot of links to YouTube video channels. YouTube assumes it has control over the platform, which it doesn’t because it’s connected to everyone else. Bolsonarism takes advantage of this.

See also: Eduardo Bolsonaro and the Bolsonarists lead fake news against the elections

We see that the number of Youtube in Telegram is five to six times greater than on the second platform, which is Telegram itself. In other words, the second most common platform is Telegram itself, and Youtube is the first, only it is far ahead. There are relationships there that are structural even between the two of them. So the role of YouTube is very big because YouTube monetizes it.

What is a long tail and what does it mean?

The long tail is small. This is a very fragmented network structure, consisting of many small ones and a few large ones. [produtores de conteúdo, sejam grupos ou indivíduos] there. On YouTube, we see the same pattern, with the three or four large Bolsonarismo channels getting the most links, with 60% to 70% scattered across small to medium channels that are trying to gain attention and scale within an extreme ecosystem. is their medium to eventually become one of those big channels for monetization.

What is the interface between Telegram and Youtube? Out of 100 channels, 10 are large channels with hundreds of thousands of views, and the vast majority, the long tail, are smaller channels that don’t yet have that scale to monetize, but are trying that scale.

Editing: Felipe Mendez