Demarcating Patriotic Science on Digital Platforms: Covid-19, Chloroquine and the Institutionalisation of Ignorance in Brazil

ABSTRACT

As supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the Bolsonarism movement has promoted the drug chloroquine for treating Covid-19 in Brazil, despite it being mostly rejected by mainstream health institutions as an effective treatment. This situation can be investigated through the lens of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and ignorance studies supported by methods from digital sociology. Bolsonarist discourse does not contest scientific authority tout court, but rather constructs boundaries between what supporters of the president see as legitimate and illegitimate science. This institutionalised ignorance is produced and maintained through Telegram messenger, a backbone of the multi-platform media ecosystem of Bolsonarism. It is accomplished through boundary work: the exclusion or inclusion of knowledge via two complementary practices – pejorative accusations against mainstream science and the crafting of affective bonds with the chloroquine alternative. While the former aims to invalidate knowledge held by experts opposed to the use of chloroquine, the latter focuses on mobilising trust in an alternative model of science, which we refer to as patriotic science. This model of science is demarcated from mainstream science, framed as corrupt and ill-equipped for the needs of Brazilians. This case study advances STS resources for examining the epistemic demarcation between science/non-science, relevant to other polities and publics that use such boundary work to institutionalise ignorance.

KEYWORDS:

• Chloroquine
• ignorance
• boundary work
• Telegram
• Covid-19
• Bolsonarism

Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely thank the contribution of Juciane de Jesus and Jefte de Oliveira to the research and the reviewers for their critical reading and suggestions for improving earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 It is possible that the moderator of the group had deleted some of these messages before our data collection.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Internetab (NA) and CNPq [grant number 409403/2021-0].

Notes on contributors

Paulo F. C. Fonseca

Paulo Fonseca is Associate Professor at the Institute of Science, Technology and Innovation, Federal University of Bahia. With a research background on STS, he is currently focused on the epistemological study of extreme-right discourses and practices on digital platforms.

Barbara E. Ribeiro

Barbara Ribeiro is Presidential Fellow at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, Alliance Manchester Business School. Her research sits at the intersection of STS and innovation studies, focused on the social and ethical aspects of emerging technologies and responsible innovation.

Leonardo F. Nascimento

Leonardo Nascimento is Associate Professor at the Institute of Science, Technology and Innovation, Federal University of Bahia. He is the Director of Laboratory of Digital Humanities (LABHDUFBA) and expert on digital methods of social research.