Twitter Influencers’ Impact on the Reception of Brazil’s COVID-19 Inquiry

The next speaker in this AoIR 2023 session is the excellent Adriana Amaral, whose interest is in fan practices surrounding the government of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Her project examined social media data from Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube related to COVID-19 in Brazil, and through this work also identified the strong politicisation of vaccines especially under and by the leadership of Bolsonaro. The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on COVID-19 in Brazil (CPI da COVID) also emerged as a key player in these debates.

The CPI was formed by the federal senate, and broadcast on TV, symbolically replacing Big Brother Brazil as the most prominent reality TV show. On Twitter, a ‘CPI VIP area’ emerged as a social phenomenon – here, social media influencers with verified Twitter profiles commented on the CPI and acted as institutional filters guiding the consumption of the CPI broadcasts; many of these were games streamers and through their work even influenced the CPI process itself.

The project examined the actions and impact of these influencers. Influential profiles were clearly critical to the formation of public opinion, and the research focusses especially on four of these; these included Jairme Arrependi (Jair Regrets), which debunked statements by Bolsonaro and others; Tesoureiros do Jair, which curated content and engaged in live fact-checking; Desmentindo Bolsonaro (Debunking Bolsonaro); and Camarote da CPI (CIP VIP). Their tweets from two specific dates – the most watched days of CPI proceedings, during which key information was revealed and one of the CPI witnesses was arrested on live TV – became central to this analysis.

There was a great deal of anger and joy evident in the affect shown in these tweets, and nine often affectively focussed major narratives emerged. Key frames celebrated the CPI and condemned the government, respectively. But such practices were also highly localised by geography, and humour, memes, emoji, and creator networks were key components. Other demographic factors may also play an important role here.