Negative campaign in the Brazilian presidential race: an analysis of the attacks posted on Facebook by the main candidates

ABSTRACT

In 2014, the polls indicated a fierce dispute between the two main candidates running for the Brazilian Presidency, Dilma Rousseff (Workers’ Party, PT) and Aécio Neves (Brazilian Social-Democracy’s Party, PSDB). During the campaign, their media attitude towards each other became quite aggressive at times, especially on social network sites. The use of digital media to attack opponents is a recent electoral communication strategy in Brazil, since this was only the second presidential race in which those tools could be officially employed by the candidates. In order to analyse this new context, this paper compares the negative campaigning promoted on Facebook by Dilma and Aécio in the pre-campaign and campaign periods. For the purpose of the investigation, we collected all the 3907 posts published on the two candidates’ official fan pages between 6 April and 26 October, 2014. Through the techniques of Content Analysis and Discourse Analysis, we identified and categorised the attacks based on the frequency, author, target and type of resource used. The results indicate that the electoral period was more negative than the pre-campaign, and that the preferred targets and the type of resource used by Rousseff and Neves varied over time.

KEYWORDS:

• Negative campaign
• Facebook
• internet and elections
• Brazilian politics

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank professor Dr. Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques and the researchers Simone Faustino da Silva, Aline Mendonça Conde Carneiro e Hébely da Silva Rebouças for their extremely valuable contribution during this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ícaro Joathan PhD candidate in Communication at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), in Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. Scholarship holder of the Cearense Foundation for Support to Scientific and Technological Development (Funcap). Journalist at Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Ceará (IFCE). He has experience in the communication area with interest in online election campaigns, negative campaign, permanent campaign, political participation on the Internet, public communication and in the relationship between politics and sport.

ORCID

Ícaro Joathan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3917-8346

Notes

1. See at: http://noticias.terra.com.br/eleicoes/segundo-turno-presidencial-e-o-mais-acirrado-da-historia,f1aea71484339410VgnVCM3000009af154d0RCRD.html (accessed on 3 November 2014).

2. As of 31 October 2014 - five days after the end of the second round – Aécio had over 4 million fans on Facebook, while Dilma had 2.1 million.

3. FB is a social media founded in 2004. In December 2011, it had become the most accessed SNS in Brazil. In August 2014, about 80% of Brazilian social media profiles were Facebook ones, accounting for 89 million users per month. See more at: http://www.meioemensagem.com.br/home/midia/noticias/2014/08/22/Facebook-tem-89-milhoes-de-usuarios-no-Brasil.html (accessed on 26 September 2015).

4. All the polls cited in this paper are from Datafolha. Available at: http://datafolha.folha.uol.com.br/eleicoes/2014/presidente/indice-1.shtml.

5. Netvizz app was created to collect Facebook data. Available at: http://apps.facebook.com/netvizz/.

6. The author is responsible for the translation of every non-English citation in this paper.

7. See at http://blogdojuca.uol.com.br/2009/11/covardia-de-aecio-neves/ (accessed on 30 September 2014).

8. H3 does not cover the second round because, of course, Dilma and Aécio could only have focused their attacks on each other.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação Cearense de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico.