Brazil: stopped discussing politics on social media 2022, by voting preference

During a survey fielded in Brazil in September 2022, over 44 percent of respondents said they have stopped discussing politics on social media or messaging apps to avoid conflicts. Additionally, 42 percent of respondents stated giving up on sharing or publishing political content on their social media channels, while 15 percent left groups to avoid conflicts with friends or family members. Overall, 53 percent of the respondents stated changing their behaviors in social media due to political reasons. Among voters of the two main political candidates for the general elections in Brazil in 2022, voters for presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Worker's Party - PT) tended to be more restrained regarding such actions than those of current leader Jair Messias Bolsonaro (Liberal Party - PL).

A lush market…

  Being extremely popular and accessible to most of the population, social media is trusted by around 34 percent trusted them as sources for online news consumption. Networks like Facebook and Instagram are extensively used by political candidates, although digital advertising has so far represented only three percent of their spending on political campaigns. While the popularity of social media in Brazil could suggest opportunity, the social and political turmoil in the country, intensified by the looming federal election, points to a myriad of challenges for such platforms. 

…and its challenges ahead

  Despite being under the strict vigilance of the country’s Supreme Electoral Court, around 67 percent of respondents claimed to have encountered fake news on leading networks in the country, as almost 80 percent of respondents expressed concerns that this kind of disinformation related to politics could influence the results of the elections. For Brazilians, this increases the demand for responsibility ahead of such events: more than half of a March 2022 survey respondents stated that messaging apps should be suspended if they disobeyed a court order to avoid the spread of fake news, and 81 percent of them claimed that social media platforms and messaging apps should remove fake content.