A mão que bate é a mesma que afaga: Jair Bolsonaro e a imprensa brasileira nas "lives de quinta"

Abstract

The third wave of populism, led by far-right politicians, poses a challenge to democracy on various fronts. One such challenge involves attacking the press to undermine its credibility. A tactic employed in these attacks is weaponization, which entails the militarized use of the term "fake news" to delegitimize the very existence of the press as an expert system. This system has utilized the online environment for its propagation. Additionally, these attacks directly impact the democratic system, both in terms of pluralistic values and the structure of horizontal accountabilities.While these studies do not specifically focus on the Brazilian context, the literature presents President Bolsonaro as a part of this phenomenon. Therefore, the objective of this research is to analyze how President Jair Bolsonaro fits into the profile of an authoritarian populist, based on his confrontations with the press and the content of his "Thursday live" speeches in the years 2019 and 2020. Through a mixed content analysis, combining quantitative and qualitative methods using the IRAMUTEQ and MAXQDA software, the results reveal a negative association between the mainstream media and the spread of fake news. This confirms the strategy of weaponization in the battle for information credibility. On the other hand, the findings indicate a positive relationship between the president and the Jovem Pan broadcasting network.