[P2P-F] Fwd: [Networked-Labour] The Role of Social Media in Bolsonaro’s Irresistible Ascent

Tue Oct 30 19:18:20 CET 2018

a must read on the detailed mechanics of information warfare in brazil,

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Steve Zeltzer <lvpsf at igc.org>
Date: Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 4:16 AM
Subject: [Networked-Labour] The Role of Social Media in Bolsonaro’s
Irresistible Ascent
To: Steve Zeltzer <lvpsf at igc.org>

The Role of Social Media in Bolsonaro’s Irresistible Ascent
<http://resumen-english.org/2018/10/the-role-of-social-media-in-bolsonaros-irresistible-ascent/>
http://resumen-english.org/2018/10/the-role-of-social-media-in-bolsonaros-irresistible-ascent/

By Jorge Elbaum on October 28, 2018

The role of social networks and direct message applications (basically
WhatsApp) in the electoral campaign of Jair Messias Bolsonaro is one of the
central themes of the new forms of political configuration in Latin
America. False news, propaganda, the construction of uncritical common
sense and the sowing of hatred are not innovative practices in either
political history or war. The attempt to configure passive and malleable
subjects has been studied for centuries as a substratum of ideological
struggles aimed at capturing the collective social will and directing it
for the benefit of corporate interests. What has changed is the vehicle of
its propaganda, its directionality and the territory where the circulation
of myths and convincing and sensationalized slogans become more effective.

Virality and interactivity have supplanted the historical verticality of
political discourse. These have substituted the characteristic downward
directionality of the contents proposed by the party, the program and the
candidate. Bolsonaro’s campaign was sustained with brutal gestures and
relied on mythologies present in the accumulated social fears, much more
than on proposals and projects. For a large part of the Brazilian
population, especially those with less critical capacity to evaluate
content, the intrinsic complexity of public policies is perceived as a
convoluted and incomprehensible fiction.

Brazilians have changed the forms of communicational interaction and access
to information. The cell phone has become the priority recipient of news
exchanges and its inhabitants have access to news from WhatsApp, which has
120 million young and adult users integrated in affinity networks that
provide a significant appearance of reliability on what they send and
receive. These users represent 80 percent of all Brazilian voters and
Bolsonaro’s campaign was fundamentally effective through this way, added to
the platform of four social networks; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and
YouTube.

According to a report elaborated by the Latin American Strategic Center of
Geopolitics (CELAG), the distribution between recipients of social networks
of Bolsonaro, Haddad and Lula shows a clear preponderance of the first one
over the other two, even in the sum of both petitioning leaders. The
particularity of this data is that the target age of the followers is based
on the youngest, the so-called millenials, who have limited exposure to TV,
do not listen to radio frequency and the Internet and are informed only
through networks segmented by interest groups.

Followers of Social Media networks (in millions of users) during the
campaign

Bolsonaro    Lula   Haddad

Facebook        7             5          1

Twitter         1,5            0.5       .8

Instagram    4.5          0.5       .5

Total               13            6         2.3

A large part of the campaign was configured by consultant experts in
algorithms and audience analysis, capable of detecting the deepest
emotional fears and rejections that permeate society. Several of these
fears were previously inoculated with unusual persistence by hegemonic
media, and then targeted at specific segments detected with demographic and
statistical precision. The latter ended up constituting the central
political activism of the army captain, exonerated in 1988, under the
accusation of scheduling bombings at the Adutora del Guandu supply station,
which provided drinking water to the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. The
subsequent step consisted of using thousands of network influencers
(previously detected for having a large number of followers) to
geometrically multiply the threats, lies and occasional misrepresentations
that could be maximized in the campaign. The final step included the use of
robotic applications capable of analyzing the initial big data (provided by
the reception trials), and willing to evaluate the success or failure of
the fake-news. With that information, analysts were reoriented and
repositioned precisely and tightly on the most pampered axes.

The viral circle predisposed to achieve a positive electoral wave to the
interests of the Brazilian right was configured from seven agreed upon axes
within the Bolsonaro campaign team, in which Steve Bannon, former chief
advisor to Donald Trump, participates. Along with him were members of the
Brazilian Army’s Electronic Warfare Communications Command (CComGEx),
trained in sociology, anthropology, communication and statistics, knowledge
available for Tactics and Operational Procedures (TTP), undoubted
psychological warfare devices . According to analyst Rodrigo Lentz,
Fernando Haddad was illegally monitored by teams led by General Sérgio
Etchegoyen, currently a member of the institutional security ministry of
the Brazilian presidency.

The chapters of fabricated communicational intoxication, chosen as a
priority to delegitimize Fernando Haddad and the PT were the following (1)
The existence of a supposed “gay kit”, oriented to sexualize girls and
boys, that Haddad would have been distributed in public schools, while he
was minister of education in Lula’s government. (2) Appealing to the
Venezuelan crisis as the future potential of the direction of a PT
government. The diffusion of empty gondolas with the sign of Chavismo was
the central image that accompanied this viralization. (3) The spreading of
an image of an old woman supposedly attacked by leftist militants (with her
face deformed by the blows), when in reality it was a photograph of an
actor who had had an accident. (4) Haddad’s alleged defense of incest,
denounced by one of the extreme right-wing ideologues, Olavo Carvalho. (5)
The alleged intention of the PT to legalize pedophilia. (6) The
distribution of a photo of Dilma Rousseff as a member of a Cuban military
battalion.

None of these viralizations would be effective if it were not directed
specifically to those who have a less critical capacity to deny them or
contrast them with reality. This is the role of robots that analyze big
data and can orient more effective messages to each particular social
segment. Historian Marc Bloch, shot by the Nazis for his status as a Jewish
member of the French resistance on June 16, 1944, asked in a 1921 text:
“False news, in all its forms, has been part of humanity. How are they
born? (…) A falsehood only spreads and amplifies, it only comes to life on
one condition, if it can find in the society in which it comes to life in a
favorable breeding ground. Unconsciously it allows people to express their
prejudices, their hatred, and their fears.” So fake-news is not new. It
only demands subjects who accept to believe them in order to accommodate
certain installed fears. The basic solution implies the development of
critical citizens that are not affected by symbolic manipulations.

After the Second World War, Albert Camus published The Plague. In his last
paragraph he stated: “For he knew that this happy crowd ignored what can be
read in books, that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears, that it
can sleep for decades in furniture, clothes, that it patiently waits in
alcoves, cellars, suitcases, handkerchiefs and papers, and that a day may
come when the plague, for the misfortune and teaching of men, wakes up its
rats and sends them to die in a blissful city, for the misfortune and
teaching of men,”. The plague has returned. His name is Bolsonaro; a Macri
without marketing and without restraint.

https://elciervoherido.wordpress.com/2018/10/28/la-peste-en-red-jorge-elbaum/

Source: El Ciervo Herido, translated by Resumen Latinoamericano, North
America bureau
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