The second presenter in this session at the AoIR 2025 conference is Felipe Soares, whose focus is on the Bolsonarist coup attempt in Brazil on 8 January 2022. This occurred after Bolsonaro’s close election loss in November 2022, which Bolsonaro disputed and which led his supporters to call for military intervention. By now, Bolsonaro has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for this coup attempt.
These events can be seen as a clear sign of deep-set destructive polarisation in Brazil: there is a breakdown of communication between the sides, an emotional exclusion of others, and a dismissal of information from counter-attitudinal sources. This can also be understood as a rearrangement of the Brazilian public sphere, in part as a result of long-running disinformation campaigns. But why did it take three months from the election outcome to the coup attempt?
Felipe used data from Facebook to generate bipartite networks between Facebook pages and the texts of the images, or the URLs of the links they shared; this resulted in networks that were obviously polarised between pro-Bolsonaro and pro-Lula groups.
These were further filtered down to content that was directly related to the electoral process, and categorised by their themes. One such theme was hope (for the overturning of the election results, and the eventual reelection of Bolsonaro): here, early and partial election results were shared. Another was safeguarding the election, where information about Bolsonaro’s connections with the military and the voluntary election scrutineers were highlighted. But then there was also betrayal, emphasising claims of election fraud and attacking supposed deep state actors like the Supreme Electoral Court for their alleged attempts to steal the election. Finally, users also claimed censorship of right-wing voices in favour of left-wing politicians and media.
None of these claims were explicitly calling for an end of democracy; even those calling for military intervention did so under the guise of defending democracy, and they therefore position democracy as existing only under Bolsonaro’s rule. In support of such claims, users frequently shared mainstream rather than fringe media content; this means that we need a broader concept of disinformation that includes mainstream media content which is taken out of context and utilised in the context of shared conservative, religious, and ultimately anti-democratic values.
