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WhatsApp and political instability in Brazil: targeted messages and political radicalisation

Rafael Evangelista, State University of Campinas (Unicamp)
Fernanda Bruno, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
PUBLISHED ON: 31 Dec 2019 DOI: 10.14763/2019.4.1434

This paper analyses the spread of misinformation in the context of 2018 Brazilian elections. We give a general overview of the Brazilian political context, its media ecosystem and the weaponisation of the country’s most popular messaging app, WhatsApp, as a political persuasion tool. The current architecture of the platform does not allow, once

Focusing on whether data-intensive technologies used in political campaigning are accurate and effective misses the point about their larger role in politics. This piece briefly addresses the popular question of “Does it work?” and suggests a series of questions and provocations that aim to more holistically capture the extent of tech-led