Fake news in pictures: understanding a successful communication strategy in the Brazilian presidential election of 2018

Abstract

This paper proposes an analysis of the communication strategy adopted in the 2018 presidential election, won by the then federal deputy Jair Bolsonaro, and which had as one of its pillars the spread of news driven by social networks and WhatsApp groups, whose practice has been conventionally called fake news. The study conducts a theoretical and conceptual analysis of the fake news phenomenon in order to differentiate them from mere false news, as well as an analysis of the necessary concatenation between the propagated messages and real political context elements in which the voters they seek to influence are inserted. The study adopted the data collection technique called netnography and concluded that the 2018 presidential election was a perfect storm for the communication strategy effectiveness based on distortions and fraud, and that it was riddled with factors that created the political ecosystem conducive to the fake news spread.