In Brazil’s election battle is fought with no holds barred, both Left and right bombard the voters with biased information and Fake News. Quite in front: the ultra-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro.
On Monday, the Supreme electoral court (TSE) ordered that the ultra had to delete the rights of a presidential candidate Jair Messias Bolsonaro from his Facebook and Youtube Accounts of six publications. They are all directed against his opponent in the upcoming runoff election, Fernando Haddad of the left workers ‘ party, PT. Should have tried these Tweets is that during his time as Minister of education (2005-2012), with tendentious reconnaissance six-year-old student folders to Homosexuals to change the polarity.
The “Kit Gay”, the Bolsonaro performances for two years in Videos and television as evidence holds up, virtually everyone in Brazil. But the story is Fake News. Now, thirteen days before the runoff election, has traded on the TSE. Continue to be rumors like that Haddad wool legalize incest and pedophilia, to circulate, however. According to surveys, Haddad is currently 18 points behind Bolsonaro. The wave of Fake News is for the high unpopularity of Haddad responsible, said the Brazilian Journalist Kennedy Alencar on Monday in his Blog.
Jair Bolsonaro is a inflatable Lula doll on the former Brazilian President funny.
Overworked Electoral Court
Before the elections, the TSE announced that it had hard against Fake News. Judge Luiz Fux, threatened, candidate of the elections to exclude. But on the evening of the first ballot, the Bolsonaro scattered-bearing openly Fake News on the alleged election rigging, without being prosecuted. On Monday Fux, according to the newspaper “Folha de São Paulo” internally, the failure of the TSE. His successor, Rosa Weber, endeavour, meanwhile, is still a statement of both candidates to the spell of Fake News.
“It was clear to me that the court was not at all prepared”, as the sociologist Marco Aurelio Ruediger, Director of the Big Data analysis centre in DAPP of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV-RJ), compared to the DW. Its been years have raised warnings you’ve beaten into the Wind. “It is not as you knew it. I think that the court just didn’t want to have come true, what are the dimensions and what impact it would have.”
Given the mass of dubious publications, the public Prosecutor’s office has now taken up the investigations. “According to the electoral law, it is forbidden to hire someone with the proliferation of negative content on the Internet,” attorney Humberto Jacques de Medeiros, compared to the Portal UOL. He thinks there’s a whole industry behind the phenomenon.
The FGV determined a massive use of Bots, the traces of which lead in part to Venezuela, and Russia. “Brazil has become the battleground of ideologies. Not only the Right but also the Left.” The only Chance against the mass production of Fake News is to identify a financial connection between the election Committee and the producers, Ruediger. Users sharing Fake News, meanwhile, can be hardly punished. Always, you can rely on the freedom of expression. And to have it, not with malicious intent acted.
Also from the camp of the Bolsonaro-rivals Fernando Haddad to be deliberately spread false information
The open power struggle in open networks
Open networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, and closed networks such as WhatsApp, are the weapons in the battle for the opinion of your Highness. Via WhatsApp to mobilize his own supporters, and provide them with propaganda material, Ruediger. “If this content coat-of-arms in the large, open networks like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube overlapping, they take on new dimensions because they are much more widespread.”
The right political camp to Bolsonaro was from the beginning a much more active role in the use of new media. Hundreds of WhatsApp groups to support him across the country. Studies of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerias (UFMG) showed that especially about these closed groups is Fake News to be spread. It is unclear whether the groups are spontaneously organized by voluntary or professional.
Bolsonaro self meanwhile with the sheer Abundance of his Tweets, his political Idol, Donald Trump competition. He had barely campaign funds and airtime for its election spot, he focused almost the entire election campaign on social media. And he does that masterfully. Always, he is limited to simple Statements, which are aimed directly to the most pressing problems of the Brazilians: unemployment, security and corruption.
Jair Bolsonaro is in the social networks very active.
Twitter King Bolsonaro
“The others have slept, and then later not so well implemented,” said Ruediger. You’ve overestimated the effect of the TV commercials and the Internet are left out. Bolsonaros virtual followers surpasses that of his political opponents now, many times over. Although Bolsonaro itself is a victim of Fake News, which accused him, among other things, pedophilia. However, within its virtual followers, there are groups that focus on the defense of enemy attacks. Something similar has little to offer to the Haddad-bearing.
Although the spread of the Bolsonaro-bearing most of the misinformation and Fake News, so the analysis of the FGV. “But there are no innocent angel, because the left and the Right with power. Wherein the a stop to use more efficient and more aggressive than the other.”
A protester holds a poster, showing Bolsonaro with a Hitler moustache. No matter how the runoff goes out, the campaign leaves behind a deeply polarized country.
Traditional media rely on facts checks. But also in Brazil, trust in the media has dropped rapidly. In addition, the handling of the tremendous flood of information is for many Brazilians. “People need to learn, once Heard with several news sources against zuchecken. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen, because you are too comfortable or simply not educated enough to know that you have to critically question,” said Ruediger.
The result is a General mistrust. And an ever stronger polarization between the two political Camps. Angry, insulting each other as “fascists” and “Communists”. A substantive debate on the content is no longer possible. “It has been done on both sides to fuel the hate”, this is the conclusion of sociologists Ruediger. “The next government will face, therefore, an extremely polarized society.”