Whatsapp & Telegram Further Election Disinformation in Brazil

Tracking Global Events | 28 September 2022

Brazilians head to the polls October 2nd, amid a backdrop of election disinformation that has plagued social media and communications platforms. As lefitist former president Lula seeks to oust right-wing, incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, disinformation about both candidates, and the Brazilian electoral process, has surfaced, sometimes even amplified by the candidates themselves. In an effort to track these narratives on platforms relatively inaccessible to web scraping tools, Premise collected screenshots from contributors reporting on election disinformation circulating in private Whatsapp and Telegram groups.

Candidate Disinformation

Methodology

Between September 13th and 27th, Premise collected over 150 screenshots where disinformation was displayed about the Brazilian election. Each screenshot passed several quality control checks to determine if the screenshot portrayed disinformation and if it came from Whatsapp or Telegram.

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