Analysis of the comments to a presidential pronouncement on COVID-19 in Brazil, made on March 23, 2021

Abstract

This work analyzes the comments on the messages about a certain event on social networks. In this case, the denialist messages of President Jair Bolsonaro, minimizing the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Brazilian population. It analyzes how these attitudes work as a system of manipulation and indoctrination that is imposed on the behavior of the followers of a certain political group. Social networks have become an important means of communication for these groups that use them as an alternative to traditional means of communication. Creating spaces and acquiring a visibility that they would not have before in traditional media. The work methodology was based on computer programs for computer-assisted qualitative analysis. Being possible through the use of algorithms to reliably quantify large volumes of qualitative information, automating much of the data processing and saving time in the interpretation of texts through the use of lexicometric analysis. Three communication channels were analyzed that define three different groups of comments that allowed to observe notable differences between the groups, while the official channel of the Planalto Palace was more critical and contradictions were evident with recurring words such as no and a liar, Jair’s channel Bolsonaro and the focus of Brazil were clearly defenders of the ideas propagated by Bolsonaro, in which there is a clear association with the word president, god and good time. It is concluded that individuals use social networks and express in their comments their mood and feelings of hatred depending on the type of channel they are using, thus in the channels of Bolsonaro or his followers their expression is more openly passionate.