Legalizing Disinformation: Bolsonaro's Attack on Social Media Platforms (original) (raw)
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Blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-Connect), 2022
On March 18, Justice Alexandre de Moraes decided to suspend Telegram until the platform complied with the previous five decisions issued by the Supreme Court. The decision follows the partial results of the current judicial criminal inquiry no. 4781, in which investigations have uncovered an extensive system of financing and dissemination of disinformation, with calls to overthrow the Supreme Court and attack its Justices. The first verses of Cohen’s song neatly summarize the conflict between the Brazilian constituted powers and Telegram, the messaging platform known for its laissez-faire attitude towards content moderation. If Telegram is the ‘dealer’ of disinformation, hosting a plethora of groups and accounts tasked only to antagonize the Brazilian democratic regime with authoritarian discourse, the Supreme Court and democracy itself will be ‘out of the game.’ Contrastingly, if only Telegram and other social media platforms can curtail the threat to democratic governance, it also means that constitutional democracy itself is ‘broken and lame.’ One can observe the situation’s complexity by understanding that both sides of the debacle made mistakes. On the one hand, the decision is plagued with technical faux pas that undermines its value. On the other, Telegram has refused to comply with the Supreme Court orders for more than seven months, not only impeding the proceedings of an ongoing criminal investigation but also failing to engage with the Court and other governmental agencies to provide information and possible countermeasures to curb the spread of disinformation concerning public affairs.
Social Media, Politics, and Law: The Role of Data in the Brazilian Constitutional Democracy
Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2022
Contemporary manifestations of power that exceed the traditional nation-state paradigm undermine constitutional democracies' foundational principles. The Cambridge Analytica scandal demonstrates how non-state actors can exercise control and bypass individual political autonomy by exploring personal data and manipulative practices. In Brazil, similar electoral practices occurred during the 2018's election period. Political propaganda transcended traditional media outlets through social media platforms, such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Here, this is considered one of the consequences of the political reform established in Brazilian legislation, through the enactment of the Legislative Act 13.488/2017. This article proposes an investigation into the intersection between knowledge and power in the mechanism of manipulation of political subjects, considering Michel Foucault's critique of sovereignty, and conflating this understanding with Bernard Harcourt's consideration of "digital power." The aim is to evaluate the intricacies between digital media, politics, and law, addressing the complexity of power structures in the material and cybernetic space.
Revista Publicum, 2019
In the last general election held in Brazil, Laura Chinchilla, a representative of the Organization of American States (OAS) observer mission, considered the massive use of fake news through social networks, notably WhatsApp, an "unprecedented" phenomenon. The statement registers a state of novelty and, at the same time, uncertainty in the legal and social scenario of the Brazilian democracy, which since 1996 has strongly invested in the computerization of the electoral process and has specifically regulated the phenomenon of Internet use in the electoral process. Thus, a great question arises about the role that the advances of the digital world, more specifically the Internet and social networks, can play in defining the democratic agenda, especially when they place on the one hand democratic legitimacy and respect for human rights and on the other the extent of economic and social power (including its abuse) enhanced by individuals and groups. In this way, this work seeks to analyze the legal frameworks for the use of the Internet in the Brazilian elections and how the existing normativity responds to the fake news phenomenon and its implications for the full realization of constitutional democracy. In order to do so, the paper proposes a comparison between the existing legislation in Brazil on electoral use of the Internet and its appropriation and effectiveness (or absence thereof) in decisions of the Brazilian electoral courts, including the Superior Electoral Court, seeking to understand how the established dialogue between norms and judicial decisions reflects more or less effectiveness of the existing regulation for the use of the Internet and social networks in the elections, delimiting if the degree of effectiveness presented accomplishes or frustrates the constitutional bases of democracy in Brazil.
Fake news, Elections and Digital law: Regulatory Learning in Brazil?
Social & Legal Studies Blog, 2024
How can we understand the intense transformations caused by fake news in politics and law? One possible approach discussed in our co-authored article, Fake News in Brazil’s 2018 Presidential Elections is the observation promoted by the contributions of social systems theory. This is a theory that mobilizes the concept of communication as the basic element of society and its social systems (such as law, politics and the mass media). The problem of fake news brings these three social systems (law, politics and the mass media) into friction. State law – as a coupling between the national political system and the legal system – then needs to build its regulatory responses to a system that is foreign to it (the information system, i.e. mass communication), but whose impacts spill over into questions of legitimacy (political) and justice (legal).
On Digital Populism in Brazil (PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2019)
PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2019
In October 2018, Brazilians relived the shock many experienced in the US two years earlier, when Donald Trump was elected to the presidency. But Jair Bolsonaro's landslide victory came as a surprise only to those who were not acquainted with the extensive digitally-mediated world where his campaign was almost entirely run. This is the terrain where I have been conducting digital ethnography. I started this research as a matter of personal urgency, in the aftermath of a 'culture shock' of sorts, when a close relative declared her intention to vote for the right-wing candidate. From my (progressive) perspective, their two profiles were incommensurable: her, a peace-loving, spiritualized, tolerant person; him, a homophobic, misogynous, racist, "repugnant other" (Harding 1991).
Don’t shut up me: Bolsonaro on fertile ground to threaten and censor public debate in Brazil
Democratizando Blog, 2020
On August 23, after being questioned about checks that would have been deposited by Queiroz in the first lady's account, Bolsonaro threatened a journalist: "My desire is to fill your mouth in the beating. The direct physical threat generated great repercussion and the same question was repeated more than 1 million times in less than 24 hours by Twitter users, reaching the level of the most discussed subject of the platform in Brazil. However, this was not the president's first attack on members of the press. According to the National Federation of Journalists (Fenaj), in 2019 there was a 54.07% increase in the number of cases of attacks on media outlets and journalists compared to the previous year, totaling 208 records. In 2020, there are already 245 occurrences in the first semester alone. The multiplication of these attacks is not random. On the contrary, it is "a defined and increasingly well-structured strategy" of the Bolsonario government. What, then, would this strategy be? What are its objectives? And, finally, why should we worry about its consequences?
Authoritarian Challenges to Digital Rights in Brazil
The Digital Constitutionalist Blog, 2022
During the first stages of Internet regulation, Brazil, alongside fellow developing countries, positioned itself along the lines of a sovereigntist approach toward developing communication services. On the other hand, the United States and the European Union argued for a narrow understanding of what Internet governance should entail-following, at the time, a cyberlibertarian tradition that promoted self-regulation, bottom-up coordination, and the view of governance as encompassing only the Internet's technical infrastructure. Brazil and other members of the G20 (e.g., China, South Africa, and India) argued for a broader definition according to which governance should include, beyond the Internet's technical elements, issues such as illegal content and cybersecurity (Flonk et al. 2020).