Fighting ‘Fake News’ in Brazil after Marielle Franco’s Assassination

The second paper in this session at the iCS Symposium is by Daniel Gobbii and Pedro Abelin, whose focus is on the political context in Brazil. Their case study is the assassination of Marielle Franco, a woman who emerged from a poor childhood in the favelas to become elected a councillor in Rio de Janeiro, and was subsequently shot by militia on 14 March 2018.

The ammunition used for her killing was previously linked to a mass killing perpetrated by police and military officers; her murder led to a mass demonstration on the streets of Rio, and subsequently also in São Paulo and other major Brazilian cities. Such public sentiment in support of Mariella Franco was then countered by an organised ‘fake news’ campaign attempting to damage her public standing.

The milicianos who killed Franco control some 40% of the favelas in Rio, and exploit such communities economically (for example by controlling essential services like electricity or cable TV). They have created no-go areas where they exert their own jurisdiction and operate their own parallel state. These militia are composed in part of military and civil police forces, and associate with political and legal authorities; their relationships with the local population is ambiguous as they enforce a peace of sorts in the areas they control, but at a substantial cost of lives.

Mariella Franco’s image was smeared posthumously by members of parliament such as Alberto Fraga, who spread false information about Franco’s personal history and associated her with criminal elements, or judge Marilia Castro Neves, who described her killing as a natural result of growing up in the favelas. Such attacks aim to symbolically destroy Franco’s legacy, and seek to legitimise the social cleansing performed by the militias and police forces.

These real and ‘fake’ news stories spread widely through social media, driven in part also by bots: variously, Franco was described as a martyr who had escaped the slums; an innocent victim of violence; a common event that is a natural result of the violence of the favelas; and a welcome death that put an end to another apologist for crime in the favelas.

The latter of these passed through various stages: from describing her as a criminal through downplaying the importance of her death in comparison to all the other deaths in the favelas to claims that the political attention to her death was exploitative and disrespectful.

In each case, Franco’s former staff and activist supporters fought such disinformation: they worked from an easily accessible Website that served as a central repository and provided debunking material that was readily shareable via social media; they assembled an army of activists to help in broadcasting such content; they responded to all claims even when they were not obviously ‘fake’; but they also focussed only on already widely circulated content in order to avoid further amplifying poorly distributed ‘fake news’ stories; they highlighted the fakeness of messages; they utilised memes in debunking false information; they worked with legal services to pursue the key people distributing ’fake news’; they worked with traditional media outlets in amplifying their own messages; they broadcast the apologies from people who posted ‘fake news’ about Franco, compelling others to do the same; they refrained from feeding the trolls; they did not underestimate the role of the bots sharing such content; they debated with those arguing in favour of the other side, for the benefit of the audience following both sides; they worked across multiple offline networks and online platforms in order to maximise their reach; and they worked fast and prioritised speed over precision.

As a result, the material produced by the team about her went viral, and many of her opponents were forced to issue public apologies for sharing misinformation and disinformation about her. Further, four black women – three of whom were advisors to Franco – have now also been elected to the Rio de Janeiro council.