Populism, presentism, emotions and spin doctoring on social networks: Jair Bolsonaro's digital communication

Abstract

In this paper it will be defended the hypothesis that the digital communication of the then president of Brazil Jair Messias Bolsonaro (2019-2022) used populist discourses to react to the worst moments of ratings on social networks, materialized through official statements, facts of the presidential agenda or factoids, published both in the professional press and on social networks. Thus, we will present data collected on Twitter between January 3, 2020 and March 18, 2021, regarding reactions and sentiments related to Bolsonaro. Additionally, we will take an analysis of the news that would have reacted to the downs of popularity of the then president in the mentioned social network. The theoretical framework of this work is anchored in the concepts of populism and presentism and the relation of these phenomena with social media; in the concept of emotional media and in the practice of spin doctoring. From an analysis standpoint, it can be seen that Bolsonaro's strategy on Twitter was to take advantage of the contemporary phenomenon of presentism, by overlapping negative facts with news that used populist and emotional aspects. Despite of somewhat working for deeper crises in digital popularity, however, it failed to make the president mentions more positive than negative.  This article concludes that it is necessary to Eedited according to spin doctoring techniques. Without media regulation about that, the situation may degrade to levels difficult to recover from.