Mídias sociais e eleição presidencial 2018: uma análise da dinâmica do WhatsApp na campanha eleitoral no Brasil

Abstract

The thesis analyzes the main images shared among WhatsApp public groups during the campaign for the 2018 presidential elections in Brazil. The main objective was to verify the characteristics of the content covered in each image, thus understanding the main themes shared in the messaging application. WhatsApp was chosen because it was a crucial tool for the dissemination of campaign material, whether in video, image, text or audio. In addition to being the main digital platform used among voters to receive and share political content.To understand this phenomenon, at first, a review of classical communication theories such as Agenda-setting and Framing was carried out, in order to investigate the direction of contemporary communication theories. Consequently, the theoretical structure follows the evolutionary trajectory of the insertion of campaigns in the online environment and discusses the rise in the spread of disinformation in new social media. Subsequently, the research methodology was built from content analysis performed on 80 images, collected in the database created by WhatsApp Monitor. The corpus represents the images that were most shared from October 3rd to 27th, 2018, which corresponds to the election period between the first and second rounds, totaling four weeks. The results of the analyzes allow us to point out that there was a strategy of content development and themes to be discussed between the weeks, orchestrating a growth among the negative contents during the last weeks of the campaign, mainly, the attacks on the Partido dos Trabalhadores.