The three types of WhatsApp users getting Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro elected | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/25/brazil-president-jair-bolsonaro-whatsapp-fake-news
If the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s charge to the White House were jet-propelled by Facebook, the rise of Brazil’s likely next president, the far-right firebrand Jair Bolsonaro, owes much to WhatsApp.
The Facebook-owned messaging app is wildly popular in Brazil, with about 120 million active users, and has proved to be the ideal tool for mobilizing political support – but also for spreading fake news.
To understand the motivations, hopes and fears of Bolsonaro’s tens of millions of supporters I joined four pro-Bolsonaro WhatsApp groups.
After four months of receiving an average of 1,000 messages per group, per day, this is what I found:
There are three key clusters of members, who I classified as Ordinary Brazilians, Bolsominions, and Influencers.
They use sophisticated image and video editing software to create convincing and emotionally engaging digital content. They are smart and know how to manipulate content into memes and short texts that go viral.
They work fast to undermine any person or news outlet that criticizes Bolsonaro. For example, after the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s described some of Bolsonaro’s comments as “extremely unpleasant”, the Influencers quickly published a meme accusing her of being a communist.
Some of the fake news stories are simply astonishing. A group of “movers and shakers” created a bogus flyer claim that Bolsonaro’s leftist rival Fernando Haddad, planned to sign an executive order allowing men to have sex with 12-year-olds.
During the first round of votes they repeatedly circulated fake videos that showed malfunctioning electronic voting machines in order to reinforce the idea that the elections were rigged.
These three groups have different roles, but they have a lot in common: they share a total disbelief in Brazil’s representative democracy and have concluded that the system only serves those at the top.
Despite their support for the idea of military intervention, they don’t want a new dictatorship, arguing instead that Brazil needs someone to end the corruption that has benefited politicians of both the left and the right – and devastated the country’s economy.