Covid-19, plataformas digitais e polarização política: uma cartografia sociotécnica-discursiva no Twitter/X a partir do segundo turno da eleição presidencial brasileira de 2022

Abstract

This thesis investigates the interconnections between Science, Technology, and Society (STS) through the analysis of the dynamics associated with the topic of Covid-19 vaccination in the Twitter/X environment, starting from the second round of the 2022 Brazilian presidential elections and its subsequent reconfiguration between 2024 and 2025. The research seeks to understand how the socio-technical configurations of the platform participate in the structuring and amplification of discursive disputes involving scientific themes in a context of polarization. The interdisciplinary approach mobilizes Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Controversy Cartography (CC) as theoretical-methodological tools for mapping the socio-technical networks that comprise the investigated phenomenon through the adaptation of Oligoptic Maps (OM) to the digital environment. Empirically, this work articulates the exploration of The Interfaces Twitter Elections Dataset (ITED-Br), the third largest dataset of tweets with political purposes in the literature, with an ethnographic approach based on the analysis of hashtags, tweets, and user profiles. The results show that scientific themes are incorporated into broader symbolic disputes, marked by dynamics of polarization and deeply influenced by the platform's sociotechnical configurations. The thesis contributes to the advancement of STS studies by offering tools for understanding the relationships between digital platforms, scientific discourses, democracy, and contemporary socio-political dynamics.