Social Media and Political Discourse: literature review and framing democracy in social media

• Grant number: 23/07796-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2023
• End date: July 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Sociology of Knowledge
• Principal Investigator: Marcos César Alvarez
• Grantee: Isadora de Oliveira Perim
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 22/09091-8 - Criminality, insecurity, and legitimacy: a transdisciplinary approach, AP.ESCIENCE.TEM

Abstract

This undergraduate research fellowship aims to promote the study of the relationship between political communication and the circulation of authoritarian discourses on social media platforms. The goal is to understand how the communication developed on these platforms either contributes to or hinders the assessment of the legitimacy of democratic institutions, human rights, and the use of violence by the Brazilian population. In line with the interests of the CEPID project, the selected student will map the bibliography on the subject, systematizing and summarizing the national and international research that constitutes this field of study. The student fellow will also collaborate in activities on data collection (web scraping) and message coding with the use of digital methods and research software. Subsequently, the fellow will assist in analyzing the frames given to democracy, human rights, and state violence in the messages collected from social media for our research. This monitoring includes pages, profiles, and groups across various social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Telegram), encompassing conservative to anti-democratic tendencies. The selected activities will help with bibliographic and data systematizing from a broader research perspective, as well as observing changes in discursive dynamics, analyzing general tendencies in the use of social media by political actors, and examining similarities and peculiarities between the Brazilian case and international experiences.