DISINFODEMIA

NEGATIONISM AND DEINFORMATION IN THE CONTEXT OF COVID-19 IN BRAZIL

Abstract

In addition to highlighting challenges and limitations inherent to the health system, science, and technologies focused on the containment of a Virus, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed some characteristics of a society that disseminated disinformation with the same speed with which it disseminated factual information. This reality, defined as disinfodemy, made scientific denialism and some nuances of disinformation such as fake sciences, false testimonies, conspiracy theories, fake news, among others, constitute forces that may have hindered the implementation of measures to contain the spread of COVID-19. In the Brazilian context, some informational practices of Federal Government agents related to the COVID-19 pandemic may have been developed from intentionally and strategically constituted disinformational aspects. Given this, in this study we use the concept of disinformational practices, to contemplate this relationship between the subject and the information from the interaction with disinformation. Thus, we developed this empirical, descriptive and documental research, of qualitative approach, which aims to analyze the disinformation and the scientific negationism related to the COVID-19 pandemic and propagated in the speeches and interviews of President Jair Bolsonaro in the first year of the pandemic. For analysis, the various categories of misinformation related to the pandemic and verified by the fact-checking agency Aos Fatos originated from public speeches, publications on social media (Facebook, Twitter and Telegram), lives on YouTube and interviews of President Jair Bolsonaro propagated during the first year of the pandemic were used. This initial investigation allows us to trace an overview of how disinformation can be used as narratives of the pandemic management carried out by the Federal Government in Brazil.