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Running Head: EFFECTS of CORRUPTION NEWS on the BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM 1

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Running Head: EFFECTS of CORRUPTION NEWS on the BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM 1 Running head: EFFECTS OF CORRUPTION NEWS ON THE BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM 1 The Effects of Corruption News on the Brazilian Political System Olivia Dias Mirisola Guariba University of Amsterdam Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences [email protected] Student number: 11351454 Master’s Thesis Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science: Political Communication Supervisor: Lukas Otto Date: 29-06-2018 THE EFFECTS OF CORRUPTION NEWS ON BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM 2 Abstract This paper examines how exposure to corruption news related to ‘Operation Car Wash’ has a negative effect on Brazilians’ political trust in their institutions and trust in democracy. I define political trust as trust in the government, Congress, political parties and politicians. Operation Car Wash is the biggest corruption scandal in the country and one of the most famous scandals in the world, which involved politicians and executives from the Brazilian elite. First, I hypothesise that participants exposed to an article with a large amount of information on corruption will have lower evaluations of trust in political institutions and the political system than participants reading an article with less information about corruption. I then hypothesise that reading an article about corruption that involves political actors leads to less trust in political institutions and the political system than reading an article that does not include political actors. Finally, I hypothesise that political trust in the institutions mediates the effects of exposure to corruption news on trust in the political system. Therefore, to test my hypothesis, an online experiment was conducted among Brazilians citizens (N = 460). The findings show no significant relationship between exposure to corruption news, and political trust in the institutions and trust in the political system. Keywords: political trust, trust in the institutions, trust in the political system, democracy, corruption, corruption news THE EFFECTS OF CORRUPTION NEWS ON BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM 3 The Effects of Corruption News on the Brazilian Political System Corruption in Brazil is endemic. The country has a history of fraud and scandals involving not only the public sector and the politicians, but also the private sector. According to Transparency International’s Corruption Index 2017, Brazil ranked 96 out of 180 countries. Nevertheless, in the last four years, Brazil has been shaken by a massive corruption scandal, known as ‘Operation Car Wash’. It began as a money laundering investigation into Petrobras, one of the most important oil companies in the world, and then turned into a corruption and bribery scandal involving senators, presidents, congressman and CEOs of constructions companies. What differentiates this scandal from others is that the investigation has taken a toll on Brazil’s political and economic system. Operation Car Wash has exposed corruption at the highest levels of the government and in the country’s largest companies. The investigation involved more than 30 business owners, including owners of the ten largest contractors in the country. Furthermore, politicians from 14 political parties were involved in the scandals. What made the Operation so famous, to the point where it received 96% of Brazilians’ approval according to a report from the Ipsos Institute, is that for the first time in Brazil’s history politicians and prominent executives were facing jailtime. Aside from the remarkable fact that the country is investigating and punishing politicians and executives for their crimes, Operation Car Wash has had several political consequences. One of the most critical is the loss of confidence in the institutions. According to recent research from GfK Verein, the level of confidence of Brazilians in their political institutions is one of the lowest in Latin America. Only 6% of Brazilians trust their politicians. This loss of confidence could be explained by the constant exposure of the citizens to news related to Operation Car Wash. For almost four years, Brazilians have been exposed THE EFFECTS OF CORRUPTION NEWS ON BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM 4 to news about scandals, corruption and economic crisis. They have seen politicians of major political parties involved in the corruption scandal or even worse, engaged in strategies to stop the investigation. Moreover, they saw the former President Dilma Rousseff suffer impeachment in the middle of her second term, which was the second impeachment of a president in 30 years. Furthermore, the vice president, Michel Temer, who became president following the impeachment, has only 5% approval of his government and is also facing corruption charges. Additionally, Brazil’s Supreme Court judged 50 of the most important politicians in the country, from six different political parties, to have been involved in the corruption scandal of Petrobras. This constant exposure to corruption news can lead not only to a loss of confidence in the institutions but also to a lack of confidence in the democratic system as a whole, since two out of the three (Executive and Legislative) principle democratic bodies are involved in corruption cases. In fact, according to a report from the Ipsos Institute, 43% of citizens support a military intervention in the country. Brazilian political analysts claim that the citizens are disappointed with their political leaders and believe everyone is corrupted; therefore, only military intervention can ‘clean’ the country. Brazil is disenchanted with politics in general, and this has serious consequences with the democratic system as a whole. According to Garcia (2018), this disillusion with the political system will be felt in the next election, where, according to polls, the number of abstentions will be the highest in Brazil’s history. This is even more worrying if we consider that voting is compulsory in Brazil. Although political trust or the lack of confidence in the political institutions and the democratic system are not a new topic of studies, they are a new phenomenon in the actual Brazilian context. In 2010, according to IBOPE - one of the most respected polling THE EFFECTS OF CORRUPTION NEWS ON BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM 5 institutes in Brazil, the level of confidence in political institutions was at 80%, one of the highest approval ratings in the country’s history. Nevertheless, eight years later, with four of them under a severe economic and political crisis, the situation could not be much different. Therefore, I decided to investigate the effects of corruption news on the level of confidence in the political institutions and the political system. Thus, the central question in this study is as follows: Does the exposure to corruption news related to Operation Car Wash have an adverse effect on Brazilians’ political trust in their institutions and confidence in democracy? In the next section, I synthesise and discuss the importance of political trust and define different forms of trust; I then show how news consumption influences trust in general and finally I explain the effects of corruption information on trust. Second, I test my assumptions and present the results and discussion of the analysis. Lastly, I outline the limitations and implications of this study. Theoretical Framework Although political trust is a complex term, it has been exhaustively studied by scholars, since trust in the institutions is an indicator of political legitimacy. Researchers have suggested that there has been a decrease of levels of political trust in the world (Catterberg & Moreno, 2006; Dalton, 2004; Hetherington, 1998), especially in Latin America, where the region has a complicated history in terms of its relationship with democracy and succumbing to populism. Political trust is generally defined as citizens’ confidence in political institutions, such as trust in the government, the Congress and political parties; or trust in a particular politician or particular institution (Catterberg & Moreno, 2006; Zmerli & Newton, 2011). The confidence in the political institutions is part of the legitimation of the democratic system, since political trust is an essential indicator of a healthy civic and democratic THE EFFECTS OF CORRUPTION NEWS ON BRAZILIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM 6 society (Anderson & Tverdova, 2003). Therefore, for a democracy to function properly, citizens should believe and support their political institutions. Even though political confidence in the institutions and support for the political system almost always seem to be complementary concepts, Easton (1975) made a distinction between them. According to the author, specific support is given to authorities and institutions such as politicians, members of Congress, political parties and the courts. Thus, citizens can oppose the governmental authorities and if they are dissatisfied with their work as representatives they can vote to throw the incumbents out of the office. On the other hand, there is the concept of diffuse support, that is directed towards the political regime. That means that citizens can lose their identification with the democratic system, and therefore, lose their confidence in the system and the political community as a whole. In this paper, I argue that Brazil is losing confidence in its political institutions and in the democratic system; however, the loss of trust in the political system is a symptom of the loss of confidence in the authorities. However, is this loss of confidence in the political institutions beneficial
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