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The Sharp-Tongued Loudmouth: Incivility and Debasement in Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro's YouTube Livestreams
Abstract
This chapter focuses on debasement language in contemporary Brazilian political communication, analyzing Jair Bolsonaro's YouTube livestreams from 2019 to 2020. We understand debasement language as a discourse aiming to demean, degrade, or discredit a specific target, such as individuals, social groups, and personnel within political institutions. To assess and measure debasement language in Bolsonaro's livestreams, we apply content analysis that codes its elements. Findings indicate that debasement discourse is essential to his messages throughout 2019 and 2020. Bolsonaro's derogatory language addresses two main targets: left-wingers and the media. Using name-calling and insulting language, Bolsonaro attacks political parties, politicians, outlet groups, and journalists, among other subjects. Bolsonaro’s interactions (often with the Brazilian press and mainstream media) are also subject to misinformation. While the topics of his interactions with the media vary, he usually attacks media groups and journalists when he disagrees with something they published or said, especially when he is the target of criticism.
This chapter examines the use of incivility by political actors in relation to three primary objectives: building a personal brand, constructing a political identity, and mobilising supporters. First and foremost, it highlights how the use of incivility allows for the immediate recognition of the political actor employing it and, simultaneously, leads to a distinct separation from the traditional political context. Through the frequent deployment of bad manners, emotionalism, and aggression, political leaders redefine their image, distancing themselves from the so-called technocratic elite while also fostering a reconnection with their communities. In the hybrid media system, these mechanisms also enable politicians to increase their media exposure and influence over the media agenda. Second, by facilitating an emotional connection with voters, the use of incivility allows politicians to define a group identity and reinforce a sense of belonging—whether it be social, cultural, or ethnic—for which they become the spokesperson. Finally, we will explore how incivility can function as a lever to mobilise supporters and facilitate various forms of political engagement, both within online platforms and in physical public spaces.
This chapter presents an introduction to the book. Following the first, 1 brief introductory section, the chapter is divided into five additional sections. The 2 second defines political debasement as the use of derogatory language, often by 3 employing rhetorical devices as irony, cynicism, sarcasm, mockery, and ridicule, to 4 strongly demean or degrade a certain target in the polity, especially those involved 5 in the political process. The third distinguishes between debasement and incivility, 6 offering specific examples for each type of discourse. The fourth section suggests 7 a detailed account of how to assess and examine political debasement, including 8 its narrow and broad senses, detailing important sub-categories of the latter. This is 9 followed by a discussion on the key aspects at the center of the interaction between 10 debaser(s) and their target(s). The final section of this chapter focuses on a proposed 11 model consisting of eight elements or factors that need to be considered in studying 12 political debasement. These elements are detailed one-by-one, suggesting questions 13 that should be addressed regarding each element in future studies on the function, 14 role, and effect of debasement language in the public sphere. Finally, the chapter 15 details the structure of the book and briefly describes each of the contributions. 16
Objective
This paper studies the integrity of the vote counting system in Brazil.
Method
We analyze data from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) for the 2018 Brazilian presidential election to assess suspicious vote count patterns deploying five techniques commonly used to detect fraud: a) the second-digit Benford's law test; b) the last digit mean; c) frequency analysis of last digits 0 and 5; d) correlation between the percentage of votes and the turnout rate; and e) resampled Kernel density of the proportion of votes.
Results
The results show that the second-digit distributions for the three most voted candidates – Jair Messias Bolsonaro (PSL), Fernando Haddad (PT), and Ciro Gomes (PDT) – conform to Benford's law. We also find that last digit means and last digit frequency are within normal parameters, indicating no irregularities. Similarly, the fingerprint plot indicates a correlation coefficient that is consistent with the theoretical expectation of a fair election. The resampled Kernel density suggests that the vote count was performed without statistically significant distortions. These results are robust at different levels of data aggregation (polling station and municipality).
Conclusion
The joint application of digit-focused tests, regression-based techniques, and patterns in the distribution of vote-shares provide a more reliable method for detecting anomalous cases. Relying on this unified framework, we find no evidence of electoral fraud in the 2018 Brazilian presidential election. These results advance our current understanding of statistical forensics tools and may be easily replicated to examine electoral integrity in other countries.
Brazil has been one of the hardest hit countries by the Covid-19 pandemic. Far-right populist president Bolsonaro promoted social polarisation and politicised the crisis, while neglecting the seriousness of the health emergency. Despite the consequences of the lack of response by the federal government to contain the high infection rates, Bolsonaro's approval ratings remained stable and slightly increased during the outbreak. Against this background, this article turns to the question on how populist politicians in government have used communication to frame the Covid-19 pandemic and navigate the crisis. Looking at the case of Brazil, we ask: how was the Covid-19 pandemic framed or used by a populist leader like Bolsonaro? How did he communicate the pandemic in his social media speeches? By mobilising literature on populism from both the ideational and discursive perspective, we formulated a rubric and analysed Bolsonaro's speeches on social media according to a "populist-crisis" approach, using the holistic grading method. Our findings suggest that, aligned with the literature, populists like Bolsonaro use crises to advance some strategies that can help them maintain support: the creation and blaming of enemies, an alleged proximity to "the people", and the projection of a paradoxical image of "exceptionality" and "ordinariness" of the populist leader.
YouTube strives to moderate its content by censoring, demonetizing or removing videos that allegedly violate their community guidelines. Such strategies, especially if seen as unjust by the affected users, could be met with resentment, anger, and in some cases, violence. In addition to YouTube removing videos, uploaders sometimes delete their videos for a variety of reasons, such as paraphrasing or preserving online self-image. In this paper, we provide a detailed analysis of videos removed by YouTube or deleted by the uploader. To do this, we tracked over 73,000 recent YouTube videos for 1 week and identified those that got deleted or removed. We have then conducted a large-scale analysis of this data and reported on the most informative features that distinguish deleted/removed videos from the ones that remain available, as well as the features that distinguish videos removed by YouTube from those deleted by the uploader. Based on our analysis, we have developed machine learning prediction models that predict videos that will get deleted or removed at three different stages of a video’s lifetime, namely at the time of posting, 3 h after a video has been posted, and after up to 7 days have elapsed. Our findings indicate that we can predict video deletion/removal with high accuracy even at the time of posting—a strategy that could help users perceive the removal of their videos as fair as well as reduce public and moderators exposure to problematic videos.
This paper applies the notions of impoliteness and shameless normalisation to potentially impolite behaviours produced by Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi in official press conferences. Press conferences, as an activity type, involve relatively clear expectations and norms, so that impolite behaviours theoretically constitute particularly salient violations. We present two case studies involving racist and misogynist insults on the part of Berlusconi and Trump, respectively, analysed in their co-textual, interactional, socio-political as well as historical contexts. We describe the kinds of impoliteness that each politician employs, without any apology, and argue that they involve violations of the traditional moral order that are part of a far-right populist agenda of shameless normalisation. In each case, we examine comments posted in response to YouTube videos of each incident and provide evidence of polarised responses, but with substantial proportions expressing positive evaluations. We observe that impoliteness affords the possibility of presenting authentic and hyper-masculine identities and finish by reflecting on the implications of our findings for the local and global political and cultural landscape.
The term 'illiberal democracy', coined by Fareed Zakaria in 1997, has gained much traction, specifically since its use by Hungarian Prime Minster Victor Orbán in 2014. Ever since, Orbán and his governing party Fidesz have been implementing this vision resulting in major cutdowns on free speech, freedom of press, of various NGOs which support human rights, and so forth. Moreover, Fidesz won the 2018 national election with a strong focus on antiimmigration policies. Although Orbán's restrictive migration policies were widely criticised during the so-called refugee crisis 2015, many EU member states have started to follow the Hungarian policy of closing borders and protecting the EU from asylum-seekers and an alleged invasion by Muslims. Hence, I claim that formerly taboo subjects and expressions in mainstream discourse are being accepted more and more ('normalisation'). Such normalisation goes hand in hand with a certain 'shamelessness': the limits of the sayable are shifting regarding both the frequency of lies and the violating of discourse conventions – as well as regarding repeated attacks on central democratic institutions. Normalising the assessment of migrants as a threat to inner security and a burden on the welfare state and education system must be perceived as an international development – generally instrumentalising a 'politics of fear'.
The 2018 Brazilian elections saw the rise to power of Jair Bolsonaro, yet another conservative politician who won an election in recent years. What were the ideological underpinnings of the Bolsonaro vote? Was his support based exclusively on resentment toward the Workers’ Party? This article uses a unique public opinion dataset, the 2018 Brazilian Electoral Panel Study, to explore how positions on divisive issues related to social, political, and cultural factors influenced vote choice and Bolsonarismo —affection toward Bolsonaro supporters—in the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections. Results indicate that in addition to resentment against the Workers’ Party, a cultural backlash perspective, and strict views on law and order, as well as economic liberalism and rejection of social policies, were the characteristics of support for Bolsonaro.
Looking at mediated, political and wider public discourses on immigration in Poland since 2015 and exploring these in the context of the country’s right-wing populist politics, the paper develops a multi-step normalisation model which allows analysing how radical or often blatantly racist discourse can not only be strategically introduced into the public domain but also evolve into an acceptable and legitimate perspective inperceptions of immigrants and refugees. The paper highlights the strategic as well as opportunistic introduction of anti-immigration rhetoric in/by the political mainstream in Poland in recent years, often on the back of the so-called post-2014 European “Refugee Crisis”. It explores normalisation as part and parcel of a wider multistep process of strategically orchestrated discursive shifts wherein discourses characterised by extreme positions have been enacted, gradated/perpetuated and eventually normalised as an integral part of pronounced right-wing populist agenda. The paperfurthers a view that normalisation entails the creation and sustainment of a peculiar borderline discourse wherein unmitigated radical statements are often married with seemingly civil and apparently politically correct language and argumentation. The latter are used to pre-/legitimiseuncivil or even outright radical positions and ideologies by rationalising them and making them into acceptable elements of public discourse.
Populist right-wing politics is moving centre-stage, with some parties reaching the very top of the electoral ladder: but do we know why, and why now?
In this book Ruth Wodak traces the trajectories of such parties from the margins of the political landscape to its centre, to understand and explain how they are transforming from fringe voices to persuasive political actors who set the agenda and frame media debates. Laying bare the normalization of nationalistic, xenophobic, racist and antisemitic rhetoric, she builds a new framework for this ‘politics of fear’ that is entrenching new social divides of nation, gender and body.
The result reveals the micro-politics of right-wing populism: how discourses, genres, images and texts are performed and manipulated in both formal and also everyday contexts with profound consequences. This book is a must-read for scholars and students of linguistics, media and politics wishing to understand these dynamics that are re-shaping our political space.
In this article, we present an analysis of narratives mobilised by extreme right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, from March to December 2020. Our research indicates that, throughout that year, despite changes in the categories used, fear was continuously mobilised by the Brazilian president connecting an alleged ‘communist conspiracy’ to the coronavirus pandemic by creating narratives around the terms ‘Chinese virus’ and ‘Chinese vaccine’. Mapping these conspiratorial discourses, we hope to better understand (1) how Bolsonaro converts conspiracy theories into official state discourse as well as public policy, and (2) how Bolsonaro and his mediatic representatives weaponise tensions between individual freedom and public healthcare and the scientific community. Taking this scenario into account, we analyse how Bolsonaro uses social fear during the pandemic as part of his permanent campaign in a process resulting in serious risks to both public health and democracy.
This paper focuses on aspects of the discourse of Donald Trump during his campaign for the U.S. Presidency. It argues that, although we can undoubtedly identify aspects of authoritarian populism in his campaign discourse, its appeal rested on more than its content. Indeed, although significant parts of the U.S. public sphere rejected many of his claims as lies, significant portions of the electorate found his words acceptable on some contrasting basis. By developing a comparison between Habermas’s notion of ‘validity claims’ and Aristotle’s distinctions between different kinds of rhetorical appeal, the paper suggests that a discourse of ‘authenticity’ rather than ‘truth’ provided a crucial cornerstone of Trump’s appeal to his electoral base.
Using 23 novel indicators and a 1,000+ sample representative of a full undergraduate population we examined: how much consensus there was about perceptions of the incivility/civility of various categories of speech/behavior; and whether political incivility is a unidimensional or multidimensional latent construct. Confirmatory factor analyses suggest perceived political incivility is a multidimensional construct. Insulting utterances, deception, and behaviors tending to shut down inclusive ongoing discussion can be treated as distinct, underlying aspects of incivility. More than 75% of respondents viewed all 23 indicators, except issue-oriented attacks, as very, mostly, or somewhat uncivil. If replicated on a representative national sample, standardized indicators of political incivility should be constructed and routinely employed in national surveys of political attitudes and behavior.
Without presenting evidence, Bolsonaro says there was electoral fraud and that he was elected in the 1st round. Folha de São Paulo
- M Dias
Weekly live with President Jair Bolsonaro
- J Bolsonaro
Gays are not demigods. Most are the result of drug use
- M Martín
Campaign confirms video in which Bolsonaro talks about ‘shooting Acre's petralhada’: ‘It was a joke
- O Globo
To JN, Bolsonaro says he will respect the result of ‘clean and transparent elections
- B Pombo
- F Murakawa
- C Freitas
The anatomy of a coup speech
- Revista Piauí
The press in the Bolsonaro government under attacks on freedom of expression
- A P Amorim
Bolsonaro says he does not fear lawsuits and makes a new offense: “She does not deserve to be raped because she is very ugly
- G Foster
Jair Bolsonaro will have to compensate Congresswoman Maria do Rosário for moral damages
- Stj Notícias
We are all going to die one day: see Bolsonaro's lines about the coronavirus
- A Tajra
‘No more fuss and whining about it, until when are you going to cry?’ says Bolsonaro on the pandemic. Folha de São Paulo
- M Toledo
- L C Cici
The routledge companion to media and scandal
- M Ekström
- B Johansson