Facebook and politics in the presidential election of 2018 in Brazil

• Grant number: 18/17382-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2018
• End date: October 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Behavior
• Principal Investigator: Milton Lahuerta
• Grantee: Laura Gabrieli Pereira da Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

At national and global levels, the democratic regime is under question. Faced with a scenario of economic acceleration and subordination of politics to the economic dynamics, the popularization of social networks was seen as one of the possible solutions to generate greater involvement and participation of citizens. Focusing on the Brazilian case, a democracy marked by an authoritarian political culture, this research intends to explore Facebook pages in three moments: during the electoral propaganda of the first round of 2018 presidential election in Brazil (from August 1 to September 30), the pages of two politically polar presidential candidates with more 'likes' at the time of registration of the candidacy (August 15); at an eventual second round, the pages of the candidates in dispute; and, lastly, at the first 60 days of mandate, already in 2019, the pages of the second round candidate and the president-in-office. Furthermore, it is proposed an incipient approximation with the comments made by the public. Therefore, the corpus will be composed of all posts from the periods indicated and selected comments, in order to understand what themes and discourses are adopted by institutional representatives and commentators, as well as what they express.