The second speaker in this session at the IAMCR 2025 conference in Singapore is Ivan Paganotti, whose interest is in Brazil’s suspension of Xitter in August to October 2024 as a result of its non-compliance with Brazilian court rulings on media regulation. The Brazilian Supreme Federal Court has been quite active in the field of media regulation, and its suspension of Xitter has set a precedent that may also be of relevance to other jurisdictions.
Xitter had been found to be non-compliant with Brazilian court rulings on blocking and removing the profiles of far-right influencers who were undermining its democratic system and orchestrating the Bolsonarist coup attempt in 2022; it refused to appoint any legal representatives in Brazil because they were threatened with arrest for such violations of the law. In response, the Brazilian courts also froze the bank accounts of Starlink and other companies owned by Elon Musk, while Xitter as well as the Trump administration in the US targeted the Brazilian judge overseeing the case. This represents a mediatisation of the judicial process, or a judicialisation of the media reporting.
These actions can also be seen as having a kind of Brasilia effect at an international level, similar to the better-known Brussels effect by which EU legislation and regulation inspires similar regulatory efforts elsewhere in the world; in this case, media regulation in majority world countries like Brazil is seen as advancing the regulation of global hegemonic platforms well ahead of slower-moving legislators in Europe or North America.
In Brazil, though, the Brasilia effect had already been defined as federal legislators supporting local politicians by taking on and taking over legislation on controversial and complex issues that proved too difficult to address at the local level. This new Brasilia effect can be seen as a combination of both: here, Brazil is playing hardball with global companies through the unorthodox actions of the Brazilian judiciary in a way that models and legitimates similar action elsewhere in the world, and even pushes unwilling legislators in Brasilia to take a more proactive approach.
This has recently also been seen in new rulings that operators have a responsibility for problematic content on their platforms, and have a responsibility to suppress it; the Trump administration is now trying to push back against this with its trade tariff threats. How this plays out remains to be seen.
