Tough bandages before Brazil election: Influencers make their reach available to candidates

Created: 07/09/2022, 16:56

By: Lisa Kuner

A symbol as a statement: Anyone who forms an “L” with their hand in Brazil signals their support for the presidential candidate Lula.

© Mauro Pimentel/afp

Not only big influencers use social media to influence the Brazil elections, but also thousands of citizens.

Spreading fake news is even a criminal offense there.

Rio de Janeiro – At the beginning of July, a small outcry went through Brazil.

Anitta, one of Brazil's biggest stars, announced that she plans to support candidate Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva and the Labor Party PT in the upcoming presidential elections.

The singer not only promised Lula her voice, but also made her reach on social networks available to him.

More than 60 million people follow her on Instagram alone.

Social media play a much larger role in Brazil than in Germany.

From doctor's appointments to car repairs and apartment rentals, almost all agreements are made via messenger services.

Before the 2018 presidential election, social media was also the scene where social divisions were particularly evident.

It was not uncommon for family members to leave the group chat because they did not agree with their relatives' offensive campaign propaganda.

Brazil election 2022: The election campaign has changed

The next presidential elections are scheduled for October 2nd.

Favorites are incumbent, right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Lula.

Both Lula and Bolsonaro polarize.

The official election campaign has been in full swing since mid-August, on the streets, but above all online.

Former President Lula is currently ahead in most polls.

"The election campaign has changed a lot in Brazil in the last ten years," says Francisco Brito Cruz

.

He is director of the Internetlab in São Paulo, which researches the effects of social media.

More and more people would have had access to the internet and smartphones during that time, and social networks would experience a real boom as a result.

“Political communication has become more digital,” he says.

In addition to the classic TV commercials, strong social media campaigns are now needed to convince voters.

Bolsonaro is supported by church influencers

With the digital election campaign, influencers and their reach are now also becoming more important for the election campaigns.

Athletes, singers or big bloggers - almost everyone is behind one or the other candidate in these elections.

"But not only the well-known influencers play a role," says Francisco Brito Cruz.

So-called niche influencers are just as important as people with a huge reach.

They reach certain target groups even better.

The incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro is currently benefiting from the support of evangelical figures, for example.

There are also thousands of Brazilians who tried to actively influence the elections through their network.

The fear of violence grows.

Laís Leão is one who actively and consciously influences voters.

The 28-year-old comes from Curitiba and regularly shares political content on her social media channels.

Most of her posts are about urban development and gender-sensitive politics.

"My goal is to increase the representation of women in politics," she says.  

Brazil: Voters are influenced by social media

Among other things, she prepares information posts for the elections, draws up lists of candidates and explains why she recommends them.

"I'm sure that you can reach people with it," says Leão.

She relies on carefully researching the content of her mail and preparing it in an understandable way.

Political campaigns on the Internet don't always work out the way Leão did.

Often the content does not want to inform, but the exact opposite.

The 2018 elections showed that huge disinformation campaigns with false information were intended to discredit political opponents.

Jair Bolsonaro in particular benefited from this.

"Disinformation is used as a political strategy," says social media researcher Brito Cruz.

Bolsonaro is currently being supported by a propaganda network.

"This network defends the president no matter what he says," says Brito Cruz.

"It has never stopped since the 2018 election."

Spreading fake news is a criminal offense in Brazil

In the hot phase of the election campaign, false information is now increasing again, for example fake poll diagrams that suddenly saw Bolsonaro in front instead of Lula.

Spreading fake news is even a punishable offense in Brazil.

More recently, as many as 2,000 administrators were hired to handle all legal issues surrounding war-related misinformation.

However, it is clear that legal action can never be taken as quickly as false information spreads online, argues Brito Cruz.

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The social networks themselves are now trying to take stronger action against false information.

This is also made more difficult by the fact that Bolsonaro and Lula are two candidates who could hardly be more different.

With the help of filters and artificial intelligence, fake news should be recognized and deleted at an early stage.

That works sometimes - but often not.

In a test conducted in August, the non-governmental organization Global Witness came to the conclusion that Facebook responded inadequately to both false information and hate in postings.

An investigation by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro also found dozens of advertising posts on Instagram and Facebook that contained either false or misleading information.

How to rid social media of fake news in Brazil?

Still, Francisco Brito Cruz isn't completely desperate when it comes to fighting fake news.

"Of course there is no magic solution that will solve the problem," he says.

However, there are various starting points for combating disinformation – and the Brazilian actors are now much better prepared than they were four years ago.

For urban planner and activist Laís Leão, the most important way to stop lies on the internet is to produce high-quality content.

"There's a lot of demand for it," she says.

She sees the greatest challenge in communicating complex, political content in a simple and understandable way.

“Content on social media is consumed very quickly,” she says.

"It's not easy to break down difficult issues in such a way that they are well understood and distributed further."

False information, which on the other hand propagates supposedly simple solutions, would have it much easier there.

But she doesn't let that discourage her.

She is currently preparing strategic content that provides information about women in Brazilian politics.