The discourses of the right-wingers on the internet (2012-2018)

• Grant number: 23/04535-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2023
• End date: November 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Behavior
• Principal Investigator: Rúrion Soares Melo
• Grantee: Giovanna Marquesano Tabanês
• Host Institution: Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 19/22387-0 - Crises of democracy: critical theory and the diagnosis of present time, AP.TEM

Abstract

This research project, associated with the theme "Crisis of democracy: critical theory and diagnoses of present time" is subscribed to subproject II "Public sphere and crisis in democracy: economic, cultural and political dimensions of counterpublics." Our research seeks to systematize and to interpret the role of digital platforms - Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube - from 2012 to 2018 in establishing groups that started to position themselves as politically right-wing, using these spaces to contest the current governments and to organize protests using the discursive narrative of corrupt governments. With the concept of counterpublics from the post-Habermas lineage and its contributions to understanding new social movements, the project will investigate the relation between the diagnosis of crises in democracy and the rise of participatory social and political movements that at first happened digitally, producing a vast content that contributed to economic, social and political transformations in Brazil. The internet and social networks can be understood as a viable space to share ideas and written or spoken expressions e to, in face of the possibilities of disseminating this material, share ideas that oppose political and party systems and their representation, forming groups that take advantage of digital media to form a political thought based upon online opinions.Through these resources available on the internet, three events will be examined in the selected period: the "mensalão" judgment in 2014, "Lava Jato" in 2014 and Luís Inácio Lula da Silva's arrest in 2018, identifying continuities and discontinuities on the topic of corruption.¨We will produce a database with texts, images and contents produced from 2012 to 2018, indicating key terms, topics with higher engagement and the language employed by online and offline groups, highlighting the specificities in each one of the platforms. The analysis of digital resources and its productions has the function of presenting how a counterpublic constitutes itself as delimited by the insistence in mentioning the themes of the corruption of politicians and parties, something that structures an unforeseen manner of reinvindicating and observing social changes and the crises in Brazilian democracy.