01/04/2016 Brazil’s Twittersphere polarised on Lula FT.com
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/3/0998d2fee77711e5bc31138df2ae9ee6.html#axzz44bvAODU5 1/4
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CommentsEM SQUARED March 11, 2016 5:26 pm
A
Jonathan Wheatley
Study shows supporters and detractors are lining up behind deeply drawn
battle lines
s the FT notes in an editorial on Friday, Brazil’s rapidly escalating political crisis is running an increasing risk of polarisation. Regardless of the guilt or innocence of politicians allegedly involved in various forms of bribery and corruption, their supporters and detractors are lining up behind deeply drawn battle lines.
A survey conducted for the FT by Marco Aurélio Ruediger and his staff at the department of public policy analysis at the Fundação Getulio Vargas, a university in Rio de Janeiro, provides a graphic illustration.
It traces the activity of Brazilians on social media between March 4 and 10 — a period that opened with former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva being taken in by police for questioning, and closed with prosecutors charging him with money laundering.
Mr Ruediger and colleagues analysed more than 700,000 tweets during those days containing the world “Lula”.
Brazil is the world leader in use of social media in terms of both population penetration and time spent online, according to ComScore, an internet audience measurement company. So activity on Twitter is a reasonable portrayal of attitudes among the politically engaged population.
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01/04/2016 Brazil’s Twittersphere polarised on Lula FT.com
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/3/0998d2fee77711e5bc31138df2ae9ee6.html#axzz44bvAODU5 2/4 As the image suggests, those attitudes are already deeply polarised.
In the red section are tweets and retweets with messages supporting Lula (as he is known by all) and questioning the motives of police and prosecutors.
“If Dilma Rousseff is now one of the most unpopular presidents in Brazilian history, the same can’t be said of Lula,” comments Mr Ruediger. “His social base has shown its reactive power and its willingness to go out in his support.”
In the blue section are tweets “celebrating” the past week’s events, says Mr Ruediger.
The yellow represent media outlets. Their tweets are widely distributed within the two hemispheres but, beyond that, the two sides barely interact.
The image portrays the “intense polarisation” of those for and against Mr Lula da Silva, says Mr Ruediger, and underlines the political challenges ahead.
“At this point, consensus building is seriously affected in the country,” he notes.
01/04/2016 Brazil’s Twittersphere polarised on Lula FT.com
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/3/0998d2fee77711e5bc31138df2ae9ee6.html#axzz44bvAODU5 3/4
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Her second term in office has been overshadowed by the spectre of impeachment from the
beginning. Now, with the economy imploding and investigators in the “car wash” corruption probe reaching places never before imagined, her job is hanging by a thread.
Columnist Mônica Bergamo wrote in the Folha de S.Paulo on Friday that the president was already resigned to her fate.
Those who take heart from the dogged determination of police and prosecutors that, many hope, has made impunity for Brazil’s rich and powerful a thing of the past, may also reflect that the
polarisation portrayed by Mr Ruediger’s team is not new or even, perhaps, unusual.
Their previous studies show that during the campaign that led to Ms Rousseff’s reelection, for example, Brazilians were at least as polarised as they are now.
And it is not just Brazilians. British voters, too, seem to keep themselves to themselves.
It may just be that social media have the effect of reinforcing people’s beliefs and shielding them from the views of others.
That is unlikely to help Brazil in its hour of need.
