Populism, disinformation and Covid-19

Jair Bolsonaro’s communication on Twitter

Abstract

Digital platforms have become a fertile ground for the propagation of populist and disinformation discourses. This article studies the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's Twitter communication during the pandemic of Covid-19. During this period, the Brazilian president took a stand against the measures of social isolation and defended medicines that were not effective for the treatment of Covid-19, which created difficulties for the fight against the epidemic in the country. Aiming to study the communication strategies adopted by Bolsonaro during the first months of the pandemic, the study realized a two level analysis of his Twitter publications: (i) a topic analysis of all publications within the period; and (ii) a content analysis of the 100 most retweeted messages. The results indicate that the populist communication strategy, evoking angry emotions and with a relevant percentage of disinformation, produces the contents that are most shared by its followers.