In the last debate before the first round, the repercussion on social networks maintained the pattern of other televised events: pro-Bolsonaro users discussed isolated issues, within their own bubble, while groups opposing the candidate led the engagement.

Last Thursday night (29), during the last debate of the presidential candidates on TV Globo, registered the highest rate of mentions of Amazon issues on Twitter in the last ten weeks. The highest engagement was noted around profiles of indigenous influencers.

In just half an hour, from 11 p.m. to 0:10 a.m., the volume of mentions of these themes as captured by the Trendsmap tool, a global monitoring tool of posts made on Twitter, which allows searching by word and location, reached 34.5 thousand messages. The peak time was close to the parts of the debate in which the candidates dealt with issues such as climate change and the environment, usually in an accusatory tone. This dawn alone, there were 125,2 mentions.

 

 

The tool searched for mentions of deforestation, prospecting, mining, land grabbers, riverside inhabitants, forest fires, indigenous peoples, and Ibama. In addition to these words, Trendsmap locates other terms mentioned in the same messages.

The most frequent names were those of Bolsonaro (10% of the messages) and Lula (7%). The word “indigenous” was also mentioned in 7% of the messages; deforestation, in 3%.

The points where there were more mentions of Amazon-related themes were close to the interactions between Tebet and Bolsonaro, Tebet and Lula, and Ciro and Lula citing climate change and environmental issues. Soraya Thronicke also brought up the indigenous issue when debating with Kelmon.

 

 

In the interactions between profiles, in addition to the isolation of the pro-Bolsonaro bubble already analyzed earlier, it is interesting to note the interaction clusters around profiles of indigenous personalities.

 

 

The indigenous journalist @karibuxi attracted the highest volume of interactions around her profile. It is the grouping marked in light green in the graph below:

 

 

During the debate, she shared a thread showing the anti-indigenous actions of presidential candidates Soraya Thronicke (União) and Simone Tebet (MDB). The initial tweet had more than 120 thousand likes and 20.5 thousand shares.

 

 

The thread includes a video in which today’s candidate for federal congresswoman Sônia Guajajara (PSOL-SP) explains to presidential candidate Soraya Thronicke (União Brasil) the differences between the way indigenous people and agribusiness view the use of indigenous lands.

 

 

When the candidate Kelmon (PTB), who was wearing a cassock, spoke about the catechization of the Indians as a founding element of Brazil, Karibuxi responded.

 

 

And when Thronicke, who compares herself to a kind of woman-jaguar in her election advertisements, criticized the self-proclaimed vicar, Karibuxi recalled a painting from 1907:

 

 

(Today, she shared a message on her account informing that a cousin of hers had been a victim of feminicide. Our condolences).

Another indigenous profile that attracted a lot of engagement around the Amazon theme was that of Sam Luz, also criticizing the ruralist stance of the two candidates, who were praised on the social network for placing themselves in counterpoint to Bolsonaro and Lula. It is the group marked in pink, next to Karibuxi.

 

 

The Digital Democracy Room at FGV ECMI is an initiative to monitor and analyze the public debate on the internet. Currently, it has partnerships to help monitor politics on the networks in Brazil and in Latin America. This content was produced by the partner InfoAmazônia.