MA Thesis
Maria Stenzel Timmermans / 12188700 Supervisor: Dhr. dr. M.D. Marc Tuters
Second reader: Dhr. prof. Dr. R.A. Richard Rogers New Media and Digital Cultures (MA)
University of Amsterdam 27.06.2019
A cross-platform analysis of Bolsonaro’s discourse during the 2018 Brazilian Presidential Elections
Abstract
Since 1st of January 2019 Brazil has a new president, openly right-wing, homophobic and racist populist
politician Jair Bolsonaro. This presidential election marked yet another milestone of political campaigns run mostly on social media, in which aggressive rhetoric and the deliberate use of Fake News have become a norm. Therefore, it becomes imperative to look into the communicative patterns that such politicians are implementing on their social media channels. A cross-platform analysis delving into the visual and textual content uploaded during the election period on Jair Bolsonaro’s official Twitter and Instagram accounts was conducted for this research. However, the aim was not only to analyze Bolsonaro’s communication tactics in the online sphere, but also to discern whether social media has become the new mode of power through which right-wing populist politicians can radicalize their audience during election periods.
As the results have shown, Jair Bolsonaro made use of various populist communication tactics: He posted various personalized messages and images of his family or mundane personal situations in to create a closer and more intimate connection with the reader. He actively shamed the opposing political party for their wrong-doings and blamed solely them for the downfall of the Brazilian social, political and economic state. Accusing the media of publishing biased information and Fake News regarding Jair Bolsonaro and his political party was also commonly present in the data set. Furthermore, he presented himself as the only savior of the nation, promising the Brazilian population to restore their country. Thus, by implementing radical, at times unethical and aggressively inclined rhetoric during his presidential campaign, he was able to win over a large majority of votes in his favor.
Although the results of the analysis indicate that the emergence of social media has provided right-wing populist politicians with a larger pool of opportunities for communication purposes during election periods, the actual effect that his campaign tactics had on the election outcome cannot be amounted for. Considering the unstable political, social and economic situation of Brazil, the election outcome should come to no surprise - as such countries present easier targets for the ideal of grant saviors, a tactic commonly used by populist politicians. The outcome of such right-wing populism splurge can therefore not be solely blamed on the ways in which right-wing populist politicians make use of social media during presidential periods, but rather on the historical struggle between the ordinary people and the elite society of said nation as well as an outcome of an international growth of national populism. Social media seem to merely present the new way in which right-wing populist communication can flourish and be more widely accessible without restrictions.
1. Introduction 3
1.1 Introducing the topic 3
1.2 Research Problem 4
1.3 Practical and societal relevance 6
1.4 Thesis outline 7
2. Theoretical framework 8
2.1 National populism on the rise 8
2.1 Populism in Latin America 9
2.2 Political communication online 11
2.2.1 Populist (right-wing) communication in the era of social media 11 2.3 Communication strategies of populist (right-wing) politicians 12
2.3.1 Populist communication framing 12
2.3.2 Conservative communication framing 13
2.3.3 Political/campaigning approach 14
2.3.4 Personalization approach 15
2.3.5 Populism - Presentation of a fragmented ideology 15
2.4 Power dynamics in the era of social media 15
2.4.1. Power shift through the emergence of social media 16
2.5 Post-truth 17 2.5.1 Post-truth era 17 2.5.2 Regimes of post-truth 18 2.5.3 Post-truth politics 19 3. Method 21 3.1 Data extraction 21
3.2 Platform studies: Repurposing Twitter and Instagram as objects of study 21
3.3 Scraping Twitter data 22
3.4 Scraping Instagram data 23
3.5 Data analysis - Mixed methods approach 23
4. Findings 28
4.1 Emphasizing the sovereignty of the people 31
4.2 Attacking the elites 39
4.3 Invoking the heartland 45
4.3 Ostracizing the Others 46
5. Conclusion 48
Figures 58
Appendix 1 61
1. Introduction
1.1 Introducing the topic
On October 28 of 2018, national and international media laid their focus on the outcome of the most controversial and aggressive election in Brazilian history, as results proclaimed Jair Bolsonaro, a former militant, openly right-wing, homophobic, sexist and racist politician as Brazil’s new president-elect (Ferreira do Vale, 2018). This election outcome marked another degree in the growing international wave of right-wing populist politicians and political parties gaining power in governments all over the world, such as Donald Trump in the U.S., the AfD party in Germany, Victor Orban in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines or Marine Le Pen in France (Bello, 2018). Both traditional and alternative news outlets extensively reported on this polarized and controversial outcome of the Brazilian presidential election. This is taking into account Brazil's past (and present) corrupt and unstable socioeconomic and political position, and its destabilizing effects on the country overall. The election result came as a blow - the presidential election itself was often characterized by using aggressive rhetoric, spreading ‘Fake News’, and the deliberate disparaging of the opposing political parties on social media. Although Bolsonaro has been called the new ‘Tropical Trump’, various sources have voiced their evaluation of character to be coinciding, rather, with Rodrigo Duterte’s ideological beliefs, pointing out that he poses a much greater threat than Trump actually does (Heydarian, 2018). Most prominently, Bolsonaro is known to openly voice his anger and hate against minority groups, favoring violence and a military dictatorship, as well as wanting to loosen gun-control to combat crime rates (Charner and Reverdosa, 2018). Considering the most controversial comments made by him over the years and even before his victory, included statements such as: openly claiming that he would rather prefer his own son dying than him being a homosexual, telling a female politician on live television that she was too ugly and unworthy of being raped, being openly in favor of torture and explicitly opposing immigration policies (Meredith, 2018). His position and influence in regards to gun-control were further evidenced by a policy change loosening gun-ownership and access, which was realized within the first few months of his candidacy (Marcello and Stargardter, 2019). In addition, his hateful narrative was reflected in the implemented
measurements designed to endanger the Indigenous population in the Amazon (Passarinho, 2019).
Taking all these aspects into consideration, the question is raised as to why the Brazilian population elected such an extremist right-wing politician as their new president. As experts have pointed out, such an explanation for this might be explained in two-fold: Primarily, the Brazilian population has been immensely frustrated with the previous government. The ‘PT’ (left-wing workers party that was involved in the largest national corruption scandal in history – ‘Car Wash’ – and has led the country to its worst recession crisis in
the last 100 years (Child, 2019). In addition, crime and homicide rates have soared in the last few years, with the country hosting seven of the world’s twenty most dangerous cities around the globe (Child, 2019). By playing on the population’s fear, Jair Bolsonaro laid a strong focus on communicating his ideas of ending corruption and diminishing crime rates in the country, leading many to believe that he was the only hope for a Brazilian future (Child, 2019). Furthermore, when looking into gender inequality amongst politicians in power in Brazil and Latin America in general, one should acknowledge the historically always present ‘machismo’ culture that has marked such nation. Such culture “glorifies hypermasculinity” (Barker and Loewenstein, 1997 in Baldwin and de Souza, 2001, p.11) and suggests a “behavioral and social hierarchy of men over women and provides an ideological justification for the maintenance of that hierarchy by
articulating males as superiors to females in performing certain tasks” (Neuhouser 1989 in Baldwin and de Souza, 2001,p. 11). Furthermore, as previously noted, the rise of populism in Brazil is no national issue, but part of a much larger international change in the political landscape. Therefore, while seeing the national issues as primary reasons that have resulted in such an election outcome, this research also acknowledges global explanations as to why populism has become so common around the globe. Such explanations revolve around international fear of immigration or the detachment of the traditional political system, all which will be explained further down this research.
On another note, Jair Bolsonaro made strategic use of social media platforms during his candidacy to cleverly force his ideological beliefs onto the Brazilian population. He made use of these communication platforms as means for mostly aggressive and socially fear-evoking discourses, rather than for explicit political projects and ideas (P2P Foundation, 2018). While it still is debatable to what extent his social media campaign impacted the actual voter outcome, the fact that he mostly relied on social media during the political election campaign and used it in an extremist and brutal manner is undeniable. Bolsonaro’s party also paid external companies millions of dollars to spread Fake News – “news articles that are intentionally and verifiably false, and could mislead readers” (Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017, p.213) – about the opposing parties on ‘Whatsapp’ (the biggest communication platform in the world, owned by Facebook) (P2P Foundation, 2018). Therefore, this presidential election has yet again proven that contemporary political elections are evidence that political communication is changing from traditional media outlets – such as TV channels or newspapers – to new media outlets – i.e. social media and online communication platforms.
1.2 Research Problem
The steady and fast rise in global right-wing populist politics has started an urgent conversation in the academic world to critically look into the relationship between new media platforms and politics and what role these platforms play in this phenomenon. As previous research has shown, politicians – especially populist ones – have started to strategically implement social media platforms as new means of
themselves (through both ethical and unethical means) is no new phenomenon, the establishment of online media platforms present new instruments and possibilities for political propaganda (P2P Foundation, 2018). Social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram allow for a new flow of communication between politicians and the audience, due to the fact that these platforms afford interactive features allowing users to directly message, comment or re-post content posted by the politicians (Engesser, et al., 2016; Bracialle and Martella, 2017; Krämer, 2017). Such interactive components make political communication more personal, appealing and more approachable to the public (Kruikemeier, van Noort, Vliegenthart and de Vreese, 2013). Additionally, such platforms have implemented certain affordances – “the range of functions and constraints that an object provides for, and place upon, structurally situated subjects” (Davis and Chouinard, 2016, p.241) – that allow users to post content without any journalistic intervention. In addition, these affordances give politicians the possibility to post content with a higher frequency which would not be possible on traditional media outlets, while also providing them with more leeway in regards to what content is actually being uploaded (Vergeer, Hermans and Sams, 2013). Due to the fact that social media platforms provide more liberal and differentiated possibilities for politicians to communicate their political and ideological ideas to the public, an exceeding amount of research focused on analyzing the discourse and rhetoric used by right-wing populist politicians – especially during election periods – and how they might have influenced election outcomes. Such research mostly investigated right-wing politicians and political parties in European countries, such as in Italy, Germany or Austria. In addition, many researchers laid their focus on the interrelationship between the U.S. presidential elections and the use of social media. Donald Trump’s 2016 election was one of the primary political cases, characterized by the spread of massive amounts of Fake News, especially on social media platforms, which he used strategically in his favor and against his opponent Hillary Clinton. Thus, this case received a great deal of academic attention, leading many to believe that humanity has reached the era of post-truth, an era that appeals more to emotion rather than truthfulness (Fuller, 2018).
By looking into previous research that focused on the characteristics of political communication in the new digital era, it becomes evident that an abundance of research has focused on case studies centralized in the United States and European countries. Due to the fact that Latin America has been historically characterized by wing populism, most studies in such areas only focused on the discourses of such left-wing populist politicians (Coutinho, Carvalho Lopes and do Nascimento e Silva, 2017; Waisbord and Armado, 2016). Seen as the spurge of right-wing populism presents a rather new phenomenon in Latin American countries, focusing this study on the rhetoric used by right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro might bring new insight regarding this new wave of right-wing populism that is now marking Latin American politics. Therefore, this research will focus on Jair Bolsonaro´s usage of different social media platforms during his 2018 presidential campaign. Specifically, this research intends to conduct a cross-platform analysis of his personal Twitter and Instagram accounts during the election period, by focusing on his used strategies and rhetoric. Conducting a cross-platform analysis of Twitter and Instagram presents a different approach
when examining the rhetoric of such right-wing politician, as previous research focused on Twitter or Facebook, mostly neglecting Instagram. Analyzing not only the written but also the visual content of Bolsonaro’s campaign can bring new discursive insight about the visual representation of political communication in the online sphere. The questions leading this research are the following:
1. How do right-wing politicians make use of social media during presidential election campaigns? 2. What are the strategies that were used by president Jair Bolsonaro to spread his right-wing ideologies across Brazil?
3. Has social media become the new mode of power for right-wing populist candidates to radicalize their audiences during election periods?
1.3 Practical and societal relevance
Albeit this research mainly focuses on the case of Jair Bolsonaro’s social media usage, this study has a greater aim of finding out how social media is being used by right-wing populist politicians during election periods and how this shift of political communication into the online world has changed the power dynamics between such politicians and the new media ecology. Diving into these questions has contemporary, social and academic relevance due to various reasons: For one, analyzing the strategies that Jair Bolsonaro utilized during his campaigning period on social media might facilitate understanding the steady growth and
acceptance of such right-wing politicians in the online as well as offline sphere. Given that various right-wing populist politicians are making extensive use of social media platforms during election periods, the emergence of such platforms has inevitably altered the political communication landscape as we know it. This is
especially important in contemporary society, as the rise of right-wing politicians and discourse online has created a growing fear that democracy may be under threat. Studying the existence and relationship between social media platforms and political communication during election periods can mandate and indicate from a more social perspective, how contemporary and future elections, as well as other political decision-making, might play out in the online realm.
Additionally, it is of profound importance to understand the shift of power dynamics that have occurred between the media and politics due to the emergence of social media platforms. While the media has always played an important role in political decision-making, the new interactive, dynamic and diverse components that social media afford have changed the relationship between the politician and the new medium. Given that social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram are owned by media
conglomerates, the question is raised as to how and to whom political power is distributed in the modern age. Albeit it used to be the norm that merely governments and politicians held power over the people by
imposing rules and legislation, the affordances of social media platforms provide politicians (and
media platforms a powerful position in the modern age. Thus, from a medium-perspective, it is increasingly important to critically analyze the power shift that has occurred between politicians and the new media ecology.
1.4 Thesis outline
In order to answer the research questions guiding this study, this research will succeed the following structure: While the first chapter of this thesis presents a brief introduction into the case study analyzed in this research, the second chapter will focus on the theoretical background. This theoretical background will work as a backbone for the concepts under investigation, while also presenting the most relevant, up-to-date academic stances regarding the issues at hand. Therefore, the literature review will look into populism, especially in Latin America, the most current stances regarding right-wing political communication in the online sphere, especially on social media platforms like Twitter. Additionally, the dispersion of new modes of power, post-truth regimes, and post-truth politics will be reviewed. The third chapter will lay out, in-depth, how the data for this research was collected and what methods were used to conduct the analysis. Chapter four will present the findings of each platform (Instagram and Twitter) and at last, the fifth chapter will aim to answer all three research questions by combining the results with the discussed theories as well as academic literature.
2. Theoretical framework
2.1 National populism on the rise
Before being able to look into the traits that characterize populism specifically in Latin America, the ground-work explaining what the actual term ‘populism’ refers needs to be laid out. Seeing that populism has been flourishing successfully in the political sphere around the globe, it is important to tackle on possible social and political reasons that have contributed to this.
In its most basic sense, the term populism refers to “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (Mudde, 2004, p.543). Practically, this means that populist politicians seeking power have the aim of embodying the will to liberate the people in struggle and unify them to the rest of the community (de la Torre, 2017, p.2).
As previously introduced, the rise of populism has become a global issue. Eatwell and Goodwin (2018) have theorized that four historical social changes - aka ‘the four d’s’ - have contributed to an
international rise of national populism in the western world. The first one – distrust – deals with the will and the wishes of the people that have become detached from the elitist political system, that such people have lost their trust in governing politics and therefore focus on more national populist voices that aim in restoring their trust back. Looking back, liberal democracy has successfully achieved in including certain minority groups and representing them properly in the society but there are still more than enough examples in modern liberal democratic political systems that make many others feel excluded and left voiceless (Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018, p.14). The second d – destruction – revolves around the issues of fear that people have of losing their national entity due to immigrants ‘invading’ their nation. Such fears are strengthened by the belief that liberal democratic political parties advocate more immigration, therefore, people who fear the destruction that immigrants might bring are more inclined to listen to populist politicians who share their nationalistic values ( Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018, p.14). Furthermore, various people in current societies believe that the past was better than the present, that society has lost something and are fearful about the future to come. Eatwell and Goodwin (2018, p.15) argue that this third shift called deprivation can be dated back to the
neoliberal governance of the economy which has increased the differences between the poor and the wealthy. This led many groups to feel as though being in a less fortunate position than others and who have a strong sense of fear of the future to come. Last but not least, the last ‘d’ – de-alignment – deals with the insecurity of the current unstable political systems in power. In recent years, people have become less interested in mainstream political parties, which has led such exact parties to become more unstable and less predictable (Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018, p.15).
cultures, Eatwell and Goodwin’s four d’s seem to be the most accurate and contributing social changes that have led to the current political landscape. Introducing ‘the four d’s’ right at the beginning of this research provides a basic understanding, partly as to what social issues might have led Brazil to elect such a candidate, as well as to better situate the rise of populism in a more international context.
2.2 Populism in Latin America
Having established a primary set of indicators that explain why populism has been effectively on the rise in the West, it’s imperative to look into the specific traits that mark populism in Latin America. In order to do this, two differentiated views of social theorists will be presented. First, a historical overview of the different periods of Latin American populism and the reasons for the success of this ideology locally will be provided as introduced by the Spanish sociologist Carlos de la Torre. Next, reasons as to why populism should be seen as a normative state in the political system will be explained by theories of the political theorist Ernesto Laclau from Argentina. Presenting theories regarding populism specific to Latin America from two different perspectives is important, as one gives a clearer overview and explains why populism has become so popular there, while the other one situates populism in a more relative position in the current neo-liberal political system.
The fact that Latin America has been ruled by populist leaders since the 1930s -1940s (such as Chavez or Maduro) makes it an exemplary region of populism and populist leaders to flourish (de la Torre, 2017, p.1). As introduced by de la Torre and implemented in accordance with other researchers, Latin America has been marked (and still is marked) by three types of populism: For one, ‘classical populism’ (between the 1940s and 1960s) under the rule of e.g. Getulio Vargas in Brazil. This wave of populism was marked by the aim of including people into the society who were formerly excluded, as well as praising the ‘common people’ as being the true citizens of the nation and positioning ‘them’ (the true citizens) against ‘the rest’ (the elites and non-nationalists) (de la Torre, 2017 p.16). Characterized by a discourse portraying the opposing political parties in a negative light and blaming them for taking away the sovereignty of the people was the second wave called ‘neoliberal populism’. This second wave happened during the 1990s, was ruled by e.g. Carlos Menem in Argentina and had the agenda of achieving a clear political divide (de la Torre, 2017, p.16). Last but not least, the wave of ‘radical (leftist) populism’ (2000s - ongoing) has certain similarities to the previous waves and mashes some elements of them together. It resembles classic populism in the way that it makes social and economic exclusions a highly important political factor and neoliberal populism in the way in which it places the blame upon political parties for a nation’s failures. As de la Torre (2017) proclaims, radical populism has linked “neoliberal economic policies directly with liberal politics, practices and values” (p. 17), which as a result tied the evils of “the long night of neoliberalism” to the failures of liberal democracy (de la Torres, 2017, p.17).
countries have found a historical consistency in left-wing populism (de la Torre, 2017). Distinct to Latin American countries seems to be the fact that democracy is seen more like a collective action that is executed through leaders that have internalized the nation’s democratic ideals rather than institutionalizing democracy through the rule of law (de la Torre, 2017, p.16). Adding to this, the fact that countries in Latin America have endured national fragility explains as to why populism is so popular there. Countries characterized by fragile institutions, weak rule of law or where the disparities between poor and rich people is large, are more vulnerable for populist leaders to win over the votes of the people (de la Torre, 2017, p.16). Furthermore, de la Torre explains that the promises and executions of populist leaders in Latin America seem to stand in contradiction with each other. Before populist leaders in Latin America come to power, their promises lie in getting sidelined people included in the rest of society and being treated equally. But once having gained power, such leaders tend to “attack the institutions of liberal democracy, grabbing power, aim to control social movements and civil society, and clash with privately owned media” (de la Torre, 2017, p.1). Other researchers, such as Weffort (1989) have argued that there are three main reasons as to why populism in Brazil has been so successful: state repression, manipulation of the masses as well as the worker’s belief that the populist politicians would listen to their voice (Coutinho et al., 2017, p.700). Thus, taking the previous theories and debates into account, it becomes evident that many sources see populism in Latin America as a negative political outburst, as a non-natural and an unstable state of the political world.
Argentinian political theorist Ernesto Laclau takes on a differentiated position regarding the classical discourse surrounding the concept of populism. According to Laclau, populism should be seen as more of a “symbolic game of negotiations between different social actors” instead of a pre-fixed political system (Coutinho et al., 2017, p.701). Laclau does not believe that populism is a non-natural state of politics, in fact, he views populism as the actual existence of politics. According to Laclau, populism should not be
determined as an enactment of political manipulative power imposed from people in power (from above) but rather as a dynamic between people and politicians (Coutinho et al., 2017, p.701). Instead of viewing
populism as a fixed set of ideological ideas, Laclau sees it as representing a ‘political struggle’ or a ‘political logic’ that unfolds when the people from below are not content with how the institutional system works and want to change political and social aspects (Coutinho et al., 2017, p.701).
According to Laclau, there are certain particularities that have contributed to the rise of populism. For one, his theory on populism stands firmly on the notion of ‘dislocation’, which can be understood as an identity construction that establishes a discursive differentiation between ‘them’ and ‘us’ (Laclau, 2005). This refers to the logic in which politicians create a discourse that separates the people (us) from the others (such as the elite) who have deprived the people of their needs and demands (them) (Laclau, 2005). Such a theory resembles the previously introduced explanation given by Eatwell and Goodwin in the sense that the people feel a big distance towards the political elite and themselves. In addition, Laclau also introduces the concept of ‘empty signifiers’ as constituting the basis of populism, which refers to a discourse that expresses a
universal idea of justice and symbolically structures the political environment (Coutinho et al., 2017, p.702). This is, as Laclau believes, not a realistic political ideal, due to the fact that complete political hegemony does not exist (Laclau, 2005). Therefore, trying to promote a universal nationalistic ideal of how politics should be executed can only be seen as an empty promise, as there will always be certain people included and certain people marginalized from society (Laclau, 2005).
Addressing theories regarding populism in Latin America from two different perspectives was imperative to situate the rise of populism in a more national specific context. By elaborating on more general reasons why national populism is on the rise on a global scale beforehand, it became evident that certain reasons overlap and confirm theories stating that the rise of populism is no issue specific to Latin America but rather a global one.
2.3 Political communication online
Having looked at the distinctive features and theories regarding communicative practices of populism and populist politicians (especially in Latin America), it is now crucial to look at how politicians (especially populist politicians) use new media platforms for communicative purposes. Situating the different ways in which populist politicians communicate within the online world is imperative for this study, seeing that one of the objectives of this research is to analyze how Jair Bolsonaro made use of social media during the presidential elections in 2018. Various studies previously done in regards to this topic examined the more general use of politician’s social media habits. Other research also specifically analyzed the linkage between social media and election periods, using case studies, e.g. of right-wing parties and politicians in Europe, or the online election campaigns of Obama and Trump. The idea that social media presents a newly and integral part for (especially) populist politicians to communicate on seems to be coherent among researchers in the field (Bartlett, Birdwell and Littler, 2011; Bracciale and Martella, 2017; Gerbaudo, 2015; Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan, 2013). Scholars researching the connection between social media and political campaigning looked into how and why populist (right-wing as well as left-wing) parties and politicians make use of their social media accounts during election periods and what this might subsequently mean for election outcomes.
2.3.1 Populist (right-wing) communication in the era of social media
Due to the fact that one of the main goals of this research deals with the question of how the populist politician Jair Bolsonaro made use of social media for communicative purposes, it is relevant to discuss the academic debates surrounding the ways populist (mainly right-wing) politicians present themselves on social media. Researchers examining the contemporary political communication online have found that populist politicians favor the use of social media in comparison to non-populist ones since they have a greater interest in creating and maintaining a close connection to the people (Engesser et al., 2016). By maintaining such a close relationship with their followers, (right-wing) populist politicians create a discourse that defines the ‘true
citizens’ as the ‘people like me’ (people like the politician himself, a hard-working, native white male).
Furthermore, such discourse tends to exclude immigrants by imposing that they are not the ‘true citizens’, but rather imposters who come to the country and take the native’s jobs away (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012, p.23). This type of discourse could be seen as a way of strengthening the politician’s ideological beliefs and audience’ support. Other scholars have explicitly looked into the personalization tactics that politicians use on social media. They have found that social media platforms present themselves as being facilitators for such communicative strategy, as the affordances of these platforms ease the direct linkage between the politician (the sender) and the citizen (the receiver) (Kruikenmeier et al., 2013).
Additionally, other scholars have noted that because politicians do not have to adhere to news values in the online domain, they tend to be more keen on using social media for political communicative purposes. This way, politicians circumvent traditional media outlets and journalistic gatekeepers (Bracciale and Martella, 2017; Engesser et al., 2016; Stier, Posch, Bleier and Strohmaier, 2017). Politicians can therefore publicly upload more dubious and controversial statements on social media in comparison with more traditional news outlets (Engesser et al., 2016). This differentiation between new and old media channels can be linked to Chadwick’s (2011) concept of the ‘hybrid media system’. This concept deals with the idea that the interaction between old and new media logics compete with each other and evaluates which rules among both media systems apply and which do not (Chadwick, 2011, p. 2-3). Essentially this implies that certain rules and norms that politicians had to adhere to when presenting themselves on traditional media outlets do not longer apply to new media platforms i.e. social media platforms.
2.4 Communication strategies of populist (right-wing) politicians
The previous section established a theoretical understanding of the changes and affordances that social media has brought to political communication and presents an essential basis for the understanding of the strong interconnection between the contemporary media ecology and political communication. In order to see the exact ways in which populist politicians present themselves on social media, the upcoming two sections will deal with two communication framing styles, the ‘populist communication framing’ and the ‘conservative communication framing’, as well as two specific communication approaches, the ‘personalized/campaigning approach’ and the ‘personalization approach’. These approaches and styles will be the base for the upcoming content analysis of Jair Bolsonaro’s online election campaign, which will use these communication tactics for coding purposes.
2.4.1 Populist communication framing
Researchers have found that there are specific styles and tactics populist politicians make use of on social media platforms. Engesser, Ernst, Esser and Büchel (2016) introduce the idea of populist politicians liking to incorporate the ‘personal action frame’ on online spaces. This ‘personal action frame’ stems from the idea of
a communicative framing that includes high inclusivity and aligns people with different personal backgrounds and motives under a common cause (Bennett and Sergerberg, 2012, p.744). Taking such framework into consideration, Engesser et al. (2011) present five different tactics that populist politicians use on social media to promote and spread their ideology, which are also acknowledged and used by other researchers (Bracciale and Martella, 2017): For one, they emphasize the sovereignty of the people. This means that the populist politicians want to persuade their audience that they are the only ones capable of restoring the sovereignty of the people, of which they accuse the elite to have deprived them of (Engesser et al., 2016, p.111). Secondly, populist politicians like to spread their ideology by advocating for the people, creating a close relationship with the people and promoting the idea of putting their needs and demands as a top priority (Engesser et al., 2016, p.111). Thirdly, they incline towards attacking the elites, which is to say that they blame the elite (e.g., elite politicians, elite media, and others) for the troubles in society and politics, thus imposing them as being the true enemy of the people (Bracciale and Martella, 2017; Engesser et al., 2016). Fourth, populist politicians do not only criticize and blame the elite for the suffering and malfunctioning of society but also the ‘others’, the ‘unwelcomed’, such as refugees, immigrants, ethnic minorities, religious groups, criminals, and others and see them as a threat to society in general (Abts and Rummens, 2007, p.418; Betz and Johnson, 2004, p.313; Rooduijn, 2014, p.7).
Last but not least, populist politicians tend to share posts regarding the current state of the homeland as something that has been lost and should be restored in the present. Such tactic is called ‘invoking the heartland’ and amplifies the politicians’ ideology to ‘reconstruct’ the country of the people, as it apparently lost its greatness due to the current leaders of that society (Taggart, 2000, p.95). Furthermore, populists tend to mark a virtual geo-location in order to make clear who is represented in the community (white, natives) and who are not (the others) (Taggart, 2000, p.96). While such communication strategies have been
acknowledged by other researchers in the same area, certain adjustments were made by Bracialle and Martella (2017) which were also adapted for this research: The communication strategy ‘advocating for the people’ has been combined with the category ‘emphasizing the sovereignty of the people’, therefore presenting four different populist communication strategies instead of five, as initially introduced by Engesser et al. (2016).
2.4.2 Conservative communication framing
Adapting a different approach, previous research also focused on the framing specificities and differences between conservative and democratic political leaders. Seeing that Jair Bolsonaro is not only seen as a populist right-wing politician but also represents the conservative party called the ‘Social Liberal Party (PSL)’, it becomes necessary to look into the specific framing approaches used by Democratic politicians during election periods as identified by cognitive linguist George Lakoff. According to Lakoff, politics is divided into two family models: the nurturant parent model - envisioned by Republicans and progressives – and the strict father model – envisioned by Democrats (Lakoff, 2014). For this research, only the latter one will be further
explained. The strict father model believes that the world is and has always been dangerous and that children need to be transformed into being good humans, seeing as they are naturally born bad (Lakoff, 2014, p.40). The authority of this family model is represented by the strict father figure who straightens the children out (including punishment), who has to support as well as defend the family and who stands above all, children and wife included. The father figure disciplines the children into being ‘good people’ and self-reliant, as this family model equals ‘disciplined people’ as being ‘good people’. People not capable of being self-reliant are cut out of this equation and need to fetch for themselves, without any help from the outside. According to Lakoff, such ideals are what amounts to the right-wing political ideology and what democratic (right-wing) politicians praise in their communication (Lakoff, 2014, p.41). Such politicians turn these family values into political ones, i.e. internalized hierarchical authority figures, individual discipline, military might, the sole acceptance of heterosexual marriages or the unnecessity of welfare for the poor people (Lakoff, 2014, p.41). The way conservative politicians frame such ideological family conceptions is what seems to resonate with people because voting their ‘moral identity’ aka who they are, seems to be more popular than voting their ideological interest (Lakoff, 2014, p.39). As Lakoff explains, conservatives have understood the importance of communicating such moral values and therefore use various mechanisms to transcend such messages. Among others, these mechanisms entail: the constant use of repetition, seeing that the more people hear a statement the more internalized it gets into their brains, as well as the framing of opponent politicians as
‘immoral’(Lakoff, 2016).
2.4.3 Political/campaigning approach
The previous two sections expanded on two different framing approaches distinct to the communication of populist politicians. To elaborate, other scholars identified and analyzed more specific communicative styles populist politicians use by looking into communication strategies used by Italian politicians on Twitter (Bracciale and Martella, 2017). The two overall distinctive approaches according to Bracciale and Martella are the political/campaigning approach and the personalization approach. On the one hand, the
political/campaigning approach entails more positive communicative tactics labeled as ‘engaging’. Such an approach encompasses styles that among others, prompt engagement with the audience about issues and updates concerning the campaigns, promote themselves and their campaign, endorsements, request for action and discussions about the election campaign or political aspects. On the other hand, the more negative style called ‘champion of the people’ include addressing political issues, using simplified language, talking about taboos that others do not address, being informal, taking position into a specific issue, and invoking discourse of violence or opposition (Bracciale and Martella, 2017, p.1319-1320).
2.4.4 Personalization approach
The second approach, the personalization approach, is again split up into a more negative ‘man of the street’ and more positive ‘intimate’ styles. The negative ‘man of the street’ style entailed the explicit usage of vulgar language, evoking fear into the society and emphasizing discussions surrounding the state of politics and other current affairs of their respective country (Bracciale and Martella, 2017, p.1320-1321). The more positive ‘intimate’ style is characterized by a more personal communication towards the readers, such as addressing their personal life, posting about emotional aspects, being able to create a story by talking about current issues but also random topics.
It is important to note here that although Bracciale and Martella (2017) have found consistency among populist politicians making use of such communicative strategies, they also found evidence indicating that non-populist leaders as well make use of specific political communication strategies such as introduced above. Their explanation for this lies mainly in the fact that politicians share certain communicative styles during presidential elections, e.g., promoting themselves, calling for action of endorsing themselves (Bracciale and Martella, 2017, p.1324).
Two of the research questions deal with the question as to how populist politicians (specifically Jair Bolsonaro) make use of social media during election periods, making the previous discussion surrounding theories and concepts regarding political communication as adapted by populist politicians on social media imperative. They will be used as guidelines for the categorization process of Bolsonaro’s online discourse.
2.4.5 Populism - Presentation of a fragmented ideology
Interestingly, by looking into the online presence of different populist European politicians on Twitter during election periods, Engesser et al. (2016) concluded that populist politicians tend to present their ideology in a fragmented fashion. While this could be dated back to Twitter’s character limit affordance of 140 letters or a “manifestation of its thin nature”, they also presented three other explanations for this finding: For one, by reformulating the populist ideology more simply, they make it more comprehensible for the users of such social media platforms (Engesser et al., 2016). Second, by keeping their ideology more flexible and open for interpretation they are better able to make use of the ‘personal action frame’ previously introduced (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012, p.744). Last but not least, presenting fragments of populist ideology has a higher chance of being overlooked by political opponents or other individuals (Engesser et al., 2016, p. 1122).
2.5 Power dynamics in the era of social media
In order to tackle the research question as to whether social media has become the new mode of power for right-wing populist candidates to radicalize their audience during election periods, a theoretical debate surrounding the new power dynamics in the contemporary era of social media has to be established. Nonetheless, one first needs to grasp an understanding of what the term power entails and realize that this
study does not only see power as a heteronomous entity but rather acknowledges different types of theories dealing with this term. In the most comprehensible and universal sense, the idea of power relates to the “ability to exert influence and control structural and procedural social elements” (Trottier and Fuchs, 2015, p.27). While this text discusses different types of theories of power, it should become clear that for this analysis, the term power is seen as a dynamic flow between the relationship of how society and the state functions. It acknowledges that social media has become the new mode of how the state can keep tabs on how social orders are maintained and outlived.
2.5.1. Power shift through the emergence of social media
As previously introduced, the emergence of new media (i.e. social media platforms) has changed the political landscape and therefore the way politicians communicate, as such platforms bring in new power dimensions not previously present (Kenski and Jamieson, 2017). Because of the globally widening access to the Internet, the current environment of the media structure is becoming increasingly transnational, and the nation-state model gets challenged by non-state actors and cross-national collectives (such as the Eurozone) (Kenski and Jamieson, 2017, p.2). This means that people – regardless of their location (except where restricted by law) – can post content on social media platforms. People are no longer bound to specific geo-locations but can instead come together in the online world. In other words, social media platforms remove nation-state boundaries and allow for a trans-national collection of information and actors (Kenski and Jamieson, 2017). These changes also have implications for current power structures in politics, as power does not manifest itself on traditional media outlets anymore, but rather through global accessibility over the Internet (Kenski and Jamieson, 2017). Because vital components of how politics is executed rests on the maintenance or reformulation of particular social orders through the communication of discourse and symbolism on particular stages, social media platforms provide the perfect means for exceeding political power in contemporary society (Trottier and Fuchs, 2015, p.27).
The fact that social media has built-in affordances which allow for extensive user engagement shows that political power is not only a one-way flow of communication from the politician to the citizen anymore, but rather an actively two-way flow of engagement between the politician and the users of the platform (Kruikenmeier et al., 2013). Thus, political power is actively shifting towards social media platforms entailing integrated social roles, which are all visible by the political actors (Trottier and Fuchs, 2015, p.27). It seems that political power is not wielded merely from above, but more a consequence drawn from a dynamic flow of choices people and politicians make by using social media, and which keep the traditional social orders intact. As Trottier and Fuchs (2015) explain, contemporary media industries are the means for reinforcing corporate power over the people. Individuals working for the state or in large corporations can now use social media as communicative means, with which they have the power to nudge or control the masses actions in a certain direction (Trottier and Fuchs, 2015). This means that through the communicative means
social media affords, social orders can be kept intact. Such a theory of power is precisely what is meant when discussing new modes of power along this research. Additionally, politicians can make great use of social media in order to target potential voters in a more individualized and personalized manner than was
previously possible through traditional news-outlets (Trottier and Fuchs, 2015). While this, on the one hand, benefits the politician during election periods and can also lead to potentially more online (and therefore offline) political engagement, it also presents an issue of the commodification of political actors in
contemporary neo-liberal governance (Trottier and Fuchs, 2015). By using social media platforms as a means for political presentation during election campaigns, politics itself becomes “public relations, advertising, and the selling of an idea, a politician and a party as a brand” (Trottier and Fuchs, 2015, p.27). From Trottier and Fuch’s (2015) perspective, it seems that politics is transformed into political advertising in which the idea and image of the politician and political parties is ‘sold’ to consumers on social media spaces, while real interaction and proper political engagement are neglected.
2.6 Post-truth
2.6.1 Post-truth era
Having set a basic understanding of the discussions surrounding power in the era of social media, one can now establish a sense of the prominent academic debates surrounding the post-truth era paradigm. In order to understand what these theories entail precisely, one needs a full comprehension of the ‘post-truth’ concept and why it is relevant for this research. Albeit there seems to be an incoherence among academics when searching for a universal definition of the ‘post-truth’ concept, in its most basic sense it denotes to the idea that appeals to emotions are more important in shaping the opinion of the people than in comparison to factual information (Fuller, 2018 p.12-13). Even though Fuller acknowledges this definition, he believes this to be a rather simplistic and negative explanation of the term.
Using the word ‘emotion’ has, according to Fuller, become a post-truth lingo in itself because in this context the actual meaning of it, “which is to gain a competitive advantage in some more or less-defined field of play” is blurred (Fuller, 2018, p.13). However, Fuller does acknowledge that such definition explains the tactics that dominant actors in the relevant knowledge-and-power game use (Fuller, 2018, p.13). Other authors expand on this definition, by explaining that the term ‘post’ in this sense does not signify that society has outlived ‘truth’ in a temporal space, but rather that truth itself has become irrelevant in contemporary communication (McIntyre, 2018, p.23-24). In other words, society is living in a post-truth era in which truthful facts have become obsolete, while opinions, emotions, and discourses fitting one’s personal beliefs have become primary concerns for communication purposes, especially in politics (McIntyre, 2018).
Establishing a baseline of the concept and theories revolving ‘post-truth’ in this and the upcoming sections is relevant for this research because this goes hand in hand with the somewhat recent splurge of Fake
News in the current political communication landscape. As already mentioned, Jair Bolsonaro’s election campaign has been marked by heated discussions surrounding Fake News. Therefore it becomes important to explore theories that explain the emergence and enforcement of the new ways populist politicians
communicate and present themselves to the public. Such discussions are vital in order to situate and evaluate Bolsonaro’s discourse more accurately.
2.6.2 Regimes of post-truth
A basic understanding of the ‘post-truth’ concept was imperative in order to continue to look into what theorists mean when they talk about contemporary societies around the world living in ‘regimes of post-truth’. Such discussions and theories are relevant for this research, as this framework will ease the
understanding of how Jair Bolsonaro presents and communicates himself to the public through social media. As Harsin introduces, contemporary society seems to have entered a ‘regime-of-truth change’, marked by the globalization of technological developments (Harsin, 2015). With the use of Foucaultian theory, Harsin proclaims that historically speaking, every society has had its own regime of truth: Each society has its own discourse that it accepts and makes true, its own means by which one can detect what is deemed true and what is not, as well as ascribing a certain status to the ones that decide what is true and what is not (Foucault, 1976/2000, p.130 in Harsin, 2015, p.328). According to Foucault, the media have and still play an immense role in such ‘regimes of truth’, seeing that it is the means through which information flows to the public and on which political and social debates are discussed.
Additionally, content which gets transmitted through the media is controlled to a certain extent by “a few great political and economic apparatuses (university, army, writing, and media)” (Foucault, 1976/2000, p.131 in Harsin, 2015, p328). Albeit such ‘regimes of truth’ have historically existed before, contemporary globalized technological developments in the media have changed the dynamics between the apparatuses and discourses (Harsin, 2015, p. 329). According to Harsin, Foucault based such theory on historical mass media apparatuses, dating back to the period in which there were only a few TV-channels available for the larger mass audience. Because only a limited amount of channels were available to the people, the chances that statements with some coherency would get circulated seemed to be much higher than nowadays (Harsin, 2015, p. 329). The emergence of new media allows people to upload content at any given time and locality without significant constraints and therefore has brought new geography and temporality into the surface, shifting the concept of truth and news consumption to a more digital arena (Harsin, 2015). As can be seen, the previously introduced theory of Foucaultian power structures implies a more ‘from above’ power concept. While such discussions are important for a more comprehensive understanding of the ways that other academics have theorized about power relations and the media, such theories do not represent the idea of modern power structures in the new media ecology of which this research focuses.
the question as to whom exceeds control over such society. As Harsin points out, the dispersion and usage of information found online represent the means for controlling contemporary societies (Harsin, 2015, p.330). According to Harsin, algorithms play an immense role in controlling actions in society and politics, as they can analyze predictions for future behavior of the users in the online as well as the offline world. Control is, therefore, not anymore succeeded through the state apparatus, but rather through online software and algorithms that manage and predict human behavior (Harsin, 2015). According to Harsin, the central aspect to consider when explaining ‘regimes of post-truth’ is the increase in ‘truth-games’ within big data, as such have the power to strategically control - through data-driven analysis - what constitutes as truth in the online sphere (Harsin, 2015, p.331). Because the Internet is a never-ending medium of information flow, these so-called ‘truth-games’ can only serve to infiltrate certain domains. This means that actors cannot have control over all information online. Therefore it is only possible to infiltrate one’s (the actor’s) ideology to a fragmented audience, leaving the audience in so-called ‘ideological filter-bubbles’ (Harsin, 2015, p. 331). While it still correct that truth links to power, the dynamics have changed, as actors are now able to control its audience - through interaction and analytical prediction - in what gets presented and how it gets presented (Harsin, 2015). The concept of truth is no longer arbiter of legitimate power but rather the mask of legitimacy that is worn by everyone in pursuit of power (Fuller, 2018, p.20). Taking the previous section into
consideration, it becomes evident that Harsin, in addition to using Foucaultian theory of power, also acknowledges the idea of power being a more dynamic flow of communication in the online sphere that controls social roles and keeps contemporary societies intact. Such a theory of power constitutes as the baseline of the discussion surrounding the new mode of power in the era of social media.
2.6.3 Post-truth politics
Having set a base-line of what the ‘post-truth’ concept represents and what scholars mean when referring to societies going through ‘regimes post-truth’, it becomes crucial now to look into how politics in this era translates to the political world. As referred to previously, the era of post-truth relies on emotional appeals and is an era in which it becomes easier to pick out favorable information, therefore deriving to a preferred conclusion instead of sticking with truthful and objective facts (Fuller, 2018; McIntyre, 2018). How does this then translate to the political world? Most researchers analyzing the recently revived phenomenon of ‘post-truth politics’ used Donald Trump as an explanatory case study, being that he marked an important milestone in the social flourishing of the ‘post-truth’ concept, and has prompted the re-evaluation in contemporary democracy. Given that Trump makes on a daily average about deliberate 5.9 false claims (Kakutani, 2018, p.12) (or Fake News) designates him as the perfect analogy of how politics functions in the contemporary post-truth era. Not only does he have the audacity to make up claims that hold no origin of truth, but he also continues to gradually change his line of discourse in order to favor and forward his personal opinion (Kakutani, 2018). Such communicative strategy - bending reality in order to conform with one’s own opinion
- is a growing phenomenon in the current post-truth political sphere as can be seen with politicians in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and several EU countries (McIntyre, 2018, p.24). From these exemplary cases, researchers derived to the conclusion that especially right-wing politicians ‘make use’ of the possibilities that the era of post-truth enables. Politicians and political parties in the post-truth era are not bound anymore to the mere truth but have the ability and the means - through the usability that social media affords - to bend reality for their favorability, or to make up fake claims (McIntyre, 2018 p.24). The difficulty of information verifiability in the online sphere is a big issue, and the receiving audience of such information is larger than ever before (McIntyre, 2018). The era of post-truth politics enables a larger pool of persuasive possibilities that can have nothing to do with truthful information and of which politicians and political parties can make use of for communicative purposes. Introducing theories about the ‘post-truth regimes’ society is allegedly living in, as well as clarifying what ‘post-truth politics’ actually entails is important for this study because Jair Bolsonaro seems to present another contemporary politician making use of the communicative possibilities that this era of ‘post-truth’ affords.
3. Method
3.1 Data extraction
In order to be able to interpret how Jair Bolsonaro used social media for presentational purposes during the Brazilian presidential elections in 2018, a cross-platform content analysis on Twitter and Instagram was conducted. Because both of these social media platforms have certain commonalities and differences among them, the data extraction and analysis for the platforms were executed in slightly distinct methods. The time frame in which the data was collected was coherent among both online spaces. Posts belonging to Jair Bolsonaro's official Instagram and Twitter profiles were analyzed between the 28th of August 2018 and the 28th of October 2018. This particular time frame of two months leading up to the presidential elections, also called the ‘presidential primaries’ – the time frame in which politicians are most active for election purposes – presented to an adequate representation for this research purpose and has been used by other researchers in the same area (Groshek and Koc-Michalska, 2017, p.1393). The general election took place in two rounds, the first round on the 7th of October 2018 and the second one on the 28th of October 2018. For this analysis, only the second date (the official one) was taken into consideration.
3.2 Platform studies: Repurposing Twitter and Instagram as objects of study
For some part of the data collection a digital methods approach was adopted, such as introduced by Richard Rogers (2013a). Such digital methods approach repurposes digital online spaces, i.e. Twitter and Instagram, to spaces of social and political study rather than just for merely searching for what people have posted on those platforms. This means that researchers making use of a digital methods approach aim at conducting social research by adapting and reusing the content of such digital spaces, instead of merely looking at its content (Rogers, 2013a, p.1-3). As Rogers writes, "digital methods repurpose or build on top of the dominant devices of a medium and by doing so, make derivative works from the results, figuratively and literally." (Rogers, 2013a, p.3). This means that researchers adopting a digital methods approach look at the output of analyzed online spaces differently than the mere user does. What might seem mundane and non-meaningful for regular social media users, e.g., which pages appear on the first page of Google when querying for a specific search result, might be deemed as relevant for researchers in the digital methods area. For instance, by looking and analyzing which type of pages get ranked in which hierarchical order can give indications to particular political and social decision makings standing in focus for the researcher of the field (Rogers, 2013a, p.3).
More applicable to the study at hand are previous studies that looked into the ways that the platform Twitter has changed for the users and what that has meant for social research. Before 2009 (Twitter Research 1 as Rogers calls it) Twitter data was analyzed in the way of how users used to present themselves on that platform. As researchers have found, Twitter users initially used the platform as an ‘ego-machine’, to share mundane and everyday aspects of one's life, such as one's activities or dietary habits. Sharing such
information could be seen as interesting and worth researching for some (e.g. geotagging one's food post could be useful for geographical and linguistic research purposes (Rogers, 2013b). Twitter's tagline change from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?" could be seen as a shift to a more serious "event following tool" (Rogers, 2013b, p.1). More recent events such as the Iranian Twitter revolution have shown that Twitter has (if only partly) changed to a more serious information sharing platform and is vital for many people around the world who do not have access to news otherwise.
The era of Twitter Research 2 was characterized by repurposing Twitter as new objects of study where researchers made use of Twitter affordances, such as retweets or the usage of #hashtags to be able to create and study certain story-lines of specific events (Rogers, 2013b, p. 5). In the third and most current Twitter research era - Twitter studies 3 - the data on Twitter is seen more as archived forum, of which its data, such as retweets, hashtags, @replies, and the following/follower network can be accessed and analyzed for research purposes and have been stored in the U.S. Library of Congress (Rogers, 2013b, p.7). Overall, data on Twitter can be studied for various purposes nowadays and has shifted to a more ‘serious’ news and event sharing platform. Mainly, it seems that the study of Twitter is particularly interesting for when political events and disasters are shared (Rogers, 2013b).
While the previous focus of the study related to Twitter, such a digital methods research approach can also be applied to other social media platforms. As introduced previously, this research as well looks out into repurposing Twitter and Instagram data and analyzing what such content might mean for the social world by grounding the findings to more societal and political real-world questions. This research will focus on the comments, likes, and resharing functions, as such findings will hopefully help to answer questions about the new growing right-wing political era. Therefore, such as Rogers (2013a) explained, by taking a digital methods approach, this research will repurpose Twitter and Instagram output in order to try to ground online data into the social world.
3.3 Scraping Twitter data
The Twitter data had to be manually scraped since the Twitter Capture, and Analysis toolset (DMI-TCAT) created by Borra and Rieder (2014) was not able to collect data older than two months since posting. Because Twitter API did not allow to scroll back the @Jairbolsonaro account further than the 13th of November of 2018, manually extracting the data directly from Twitter was also not possible. Fortunately, the Brazilian based fact-checking startup ‘Aos Fatos’ aka. ‘just the facts’ in collaboration with the TruthBuzz program from the ICFJ (International Center for Journalists) collected all Twitter posts (including the deleted ones) from Jair Bolsonaro since June 2017. Using the webpage https://aosfatos.org/tweets-de-bolso/, all posts uploaded by Jair Bolsonaro in the time frame - between the 28th of August and the 28th of October 2018 - were scraped and put in an Excel sheet. The initial Twitter data set entailed 735 posts, including retweets and posts exclusively with emojis. Because this research is merely interested in analyzing what type of content and
discourse the account Jair Bolsonaro uploaded during the presidential elections, his retweets – posts from other users that have been re-used by Bolsonaro – were deemed irrelevant and excluded from the analysis. Posts including solely ‘thank you @user’ messages or purely emojis were excluded as well, as they do not contribute to a rhetorical analysis. After having excluded all irrelevant posts, a total of 538 uploads remained (N=538). The whole analysis was conducted in the portuguese. For presentational purposes in the findings sections, examples were translated into the English language. The exact analytical steps taken for this research will be explained after having clarified the data extraction and cleaning of the Instagram corpus.
3.4 Scraping Instagram data
The most accessible way to obtain all posts from Bolsonaro’s Instagram account was to make use of the DMI Instagram scraper tool. This tool enables one "to retrieve overviews of posts for a given set of usernames and hashtags" (Borra, 2015). In order to obtain the data, the query mode was set on ‘users’ and the username on ‘Jairmessiasbolsonaro’ (Bolsonaro’s official Instagram page). The data was downloaded in a CSV file and then put into an excel data sheet for better and clearer visualization. Because the CSV file included all the metadata of Jair Bolsonaro´s Instagram account, several columns were deleted, therefore only leaving the: account name; media file; link; date and captions. Overall, N=267 Instagram posts (a combination of videos and images) were gathered. Presumably, due to language differences, certain captions in the Portuguese language were not retrieved properly and entailed non-identifiable symbols, such as ‘🇧🇷🇧🇒. Therefore, the respective texts were re-adjusted appropriately according to the original text in their adhering links. To have a better and cleaner data set, posts containing solely emojis, posts exclusively stating his webpage (www.bolsonaro.com.br) or posts only thanking certain individuals and @mentioning them, such as Obrigado pelo apoio @zefelipecantor, @leonardo, @dennerferrari e amigos! Um forte abraço a todos! (translating to: Thanks for the support @zefelipecantor , @leonardo , @dennerferrari and friends! A strong hug to all!) were removed, because they did not seem relevant to this research. After removing such posts, the data set consisted of N=267, with N=191 images and N=76 videos.
3.5 Data analysis - Mixed methods approach
While all three online platforms do provide certain commonalities amongst them, i.e. being social networking webpages and affording users to present themselves by uploading personal content, each platform holds different possibilities and constraints among them. Twitter, a social networking page created in 2006, relies on micro-blogging for communication purposes and has a limit of 140 words per post (Kawk, Lee, Park and Moon, 2010). Users can make use of Twitter by posting personal texts, images, videos, links to other
webpages, or most prominently repost content of other users by @user mentioning them (Kwak et al., 2010). The social networking app Instagram allows one to create a profile based on posting images or videos
