Movimento Brasil Livre: Analysing a Political Movement Through Its Online Indicators
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Movimento Brasil Livre: analysing a political movement through its online indicators J.P. Guarnieri University of Amsterdam Keywords Brazil, politics, right-wing, neoliberal, activism, social media Abstract In less than four years, Movimento Brasil Livre has been able to garner a lot of attention from the press in Brazil. The neoliberal, conservative movement comprised of young people has been involved in its fair share of polemics, but has also gained supporters throughout the country quite quickly. This study attempts to compare their online activity to their presentation of themselves. It does so by looking at it's Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. Through a combination of data extraction, map generation and content analysis, the study obtains information about the movement's localization, goals and relationships. It finds that they are concentrated in the south and south-east of Brazil, that they are a strongly reactive movement (based on anti-petista sentiment, specifically) who grew through the radicalization of right-wing young people, that there are a few core members and that it is highly self-centred on Facebook, but interacts with both other members of the Brazilian right-wing and with their political opponents on Twitter. Introduction As social media becomes intimately intertwined with our daily lives, it starts to permeate, in some form, every aspect of social life. Our relationships with our friends, family and colleagues, that is, the people we know, the people who are physically and emotionally close to us, are often mediated through social networks in some form. It is not surprising, then, that social media has also become part of our interactions with society at large, and thus is now an essential tool for political organization. What does a social movement need in order to, if not succeed, at least grow and make its voice heard in the political debate? Lopes identifies five key aspects: “communication, organization, mobilization, validation and scope enlargement” (8), an analysis that draws upon resource mobilization theory, which, since the 70's, has been a very popular approach to understanding social movements. There are, however, more modern approaches. Bennet and Segerberg talk about a trend of individualization in collective action (744), as paradoxical as this may sound at first. In their view, in individualized action formations, the nominal issues, that is, what is being discussed, may resemble those seen in older movements or partisan organizations, such as environmental concerns or reforms in education. However, the ideas and mechanisms used to organize action become more personalized. This process is linked to a propensity to developing flexible political identities based on personal lifestyles. They note that, while people still join in collective action, and might do so in quite large numbers, “the identity reference is more derived through inclusive and diverse large-scale personal expression rather than through common group or ideological identification”. Therefore, a form of “personalized communication” is essential for the growth of social movements. This personalized communication is characterized by political content being presented in the form of “easily personalized ideas” and the use of personal communication technologies (that is, social networks) that enable sharing these ideas. The very act of sharing them explains how the action is both communicated and organized, and the patterns defined by the technologies used often become organizational mechanisms (746). It is an interesting approach to understanding the growth of social movements in a more organic lens. There are many aspects of the participation in social media that makes it so efficient in all of these areas. Users are frequently exposed incidentally to news or political content while browsing, and might be exposed to mobilizing information without looking for it by sources they already somewhat trust: the users they choose to follow (Boulianne, 3), the people they have decided they want to hear from. It also introduces speed and interactivity that are lacking in more traditional forms of mobilization (Eltantay & West, 7). Individuals participate in collective action when they recognize themselves as part of this collective. The feeling of participation comes from social identity, the collective self, which involves personal connection to others through shared membership in social groups (Wright, 2001). Again, social networks provide an opportunity for such connection and the forming of social groups (that is, after all, their very function, at least from the user's point of view). Lopes hypothesizes that, in current days, “a social movement is the effect of opportunity structures such as the economic, institutional, and social contexts of a country conditioned by its access to social media.”, and “the opportunity structures take into consideration the grievances that drive a social movement.” These grievances, she goes on to say, derive from change (be it a transformation or a deterioration) in social, political and economical conditions. (4). This thesis will study a current social movement that is active in Brazil, the Movimento Brasil Livre (Free Brazil Movement), which was founded in late 2014 and is, or, at least, claims to be, mostly composed by young people. It will do so by extracting data from its official communication channels on Facebook and Twitter, but will also gather data from the accounts of some of their leaders and other prominent members of the Brazilian political debate, such as politicians and media vehicles, especially those aligned with the right-wing. However, before delving into the movement itself, some contextualizations are necessary. What are the grievances that fuel the current political crisis Brazil is facing? What are the “opportunity structures” that led to the creation and success of the movement in the first place? The Brazilian political crisis 2013 was a very tumultuous year in Brazil. It was the second half of Dilma Rousseff's first mandate, and the social and political pressures that would, eventually, lead to her impeachment (or to the “legal coup” that toppled her, depending on which political narrative you subscribe to) were already bubbling up. The World Cup was set for the next year, and the Dilma government already had to defend itself from controversy over the policies enacted in order to prepare the country to host the event. These, however, became secondary after a chain of events, not directly linked to Dilma's policies, led to a series of political demonstrations all over the country, frequently involving altercations with the police. The spark of such massive popular outrage? A “mere” 20 cents. Protests over raises in bus fare had already been popping all over the country. In Rio de Janeiro, the protests had started in January of 2012, over a year before this discussion became a national concern. In early 2013, protests erupted in Natal and Porto Alegre. These protests contained the first few incidents of what would characterize the debate around the protests as a whole: acts of political vandalism. The media and the public would attempt to create distinctions around “vandals” and protesters who were fighting for their rights “properly”, pointing towards a separation between what were considered “fair reivindications” and the means through which they were made, that is, “acts of vandalism”, which were seen as demonstrations of the lack of a statist in the government (Barreira, 149). While these events started early in the year, they radically changed in June, when they gained massive appeal, which would lend them the name of “Journeys of June”. In the span of a single week, there were four separate protests in the city of São Paulo (Pires), where bus fare had been raised from R$3,00 to R$3,20. As had been the case in other cities before, police repression was swift and violent. Police brutality, coupled with feelings of indignation over the path Brazilian politics had been taking, led to “a national wave of mobilizations the likes of which the country had not seen in 20 years” (Arcary, 359). Now, as many protesters would say in their protest signs, it was no longer about the 20 cents. While local governments, eventually, conceded, with bus fare in several cities moving back to their previous prices, the protests did not stop. They were, now, indicative of something deeper. Where, previously, they were calling for the the reduction of bus fare and general increase in the quality of public transportation, they now had more generalised claims, such as asking for better public education and healthcare systems and criticism of corruption in the government, making it clear that the public's belief in the country's political institutions had been shaken (Barreira, 147). The protests hit the popularity of politicians all across the board. Both Haddad, mayor of the city São Paulo and member of PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, “Workers' Party”), and Geraldo Alckmin, the governor of the state of São Paulo and member of PT's main political opponent, PSDB (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, “Brazilian Social Democracy Party”), recorded losses in their respective popularity percentuals (Mendonça, pars. 4 - 16). In Rio de Janeiro, the same happened to the mayor of the city, Eduardo Paes, from DEM (Democratas, “Democrats”), and the governor of the sate, Sérgio Cabral Filho, from MDB (Movimento Democrático Brasileiro, “Brazilian Democratic Movement”). Dilma Rousseff herself was also strongly hit, losing 27 points of approval over the course of three weeks (Mendonça, par. 2). She was barely able to secure her re-election in 2014, winning with 51,6% of the votes over opposition candidate Aécio Neves' 48,3%, the tightest gap since the country's redemocratization (Benites, par. 1). As rumours of election fraud spread through the internet, Aécio Neves went as far as requesting an audit of the votes. While there was no official audit, his party later published a report on their independently conducted audit, mentioning that, despite no irregularities having been found, the current electoral system lacked transparency in the voting machines.