Pandemic and democracy:

disputes of meaning and misinformation about COVID-19 from the Twitter of former president Jair Bolsonaro

Abstract

Given the use of social networks by politicians in a new regime of communication with society, this article analyzes the Twitter account of former president Jair Bolsonaro during the first seven months of the COVID-19 pandemic to verify whether information disorders were used as a political strategy and narrative. We used Recuero’s media analysis for social networks and Malini et al.’s discursive timeline analysis to investigate the texts through disputes over meanings and vocabulary associations. We found that the tweets were constructed in a way to minimize the disease, associate Hydroxychloroquine with the cure, link the virus to a political issue, and to remove the burden of restrictive measures from the government. It was possible to demonstrate the discursive incidence in the former president's network for the construction of a political narrative with emphasis on the viralization of harmful misinformation to public health.