Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – In a divisive election campaign blighted by fears of unrest if far-right President Jair Bolsonaro refuses to accept defeat, Brazil is waging an uphill battle against disinformation wielded as a political weapon.
Analysts say Bolsonaro's 2018 electoral victory was in no small part due to an effective fake news smear campaign against his opponents.
Four years later, his backers have sought to replicate that feat, turning their attention to leftist ex-president and opinion poll frontrunner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
"Disinformation has run wild" on newer platforms such as Telegram and TikTok, which allow for the rapid dissemination of easily manipulated video content, says Ana Regina Rego, coordinator of the National Network to Combat Disinformation.
Social media videos and other posts have sought to portray Lula, among other things, as an alcoholic who will shut down churches if elected in October.
Bolsonaro also has been targeted by fake news posts that have questioned, for example, whether he was really stabbed on the campaign trail in 2018.
And despite nonstop work to debunk these and other false claims, such posts find fertile ground in a country where a 2018 study found that almost half of Brazilian voters relied on WhatsApp to read news about politics and elections.
The figure was even higher among Bolsonaro voters.
In 2022, spreaders of disinformation have even more avenues including Telegram, the fast-growing messaging system that Bolsonaro...
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