June 19 was a tough day for Jair Bolsonaro as he has shown that his story is not as compelling as it used to be.
Along with the big marches across the country against his government, 19J was also one of those rare times when the portfolio lost its ability to dominate the agenda and impose its own narratives on social media.
Atlas Monitor, AtlasIntel’s big data dashboard, reveals that on June 19, pocketbookism was not only the target of a deluge of criticism in the streets but also lost the debate on social media , especially on Facebook and Twitter.
The data shows that the actors who promoted the 19J movement were victorious in their role in the networks, as they managed to dominate the agenda of the day and promote the debate that most disadvantages Bolsonaro today: health in general and Covid in particular.
Although some sectors did not witness the march of the 19J, the networks managed to polarize the entire progressive and centrist sector around a common cause, pushing health, Covid-19 and protests to the forefront. Agenda.
Moreover, the message of repudiation addressed to the Bolsonaro administration, with the framing of the attribution of the responsibility for the deaths of more than 500,000 people, was clear and was the subject of a general consensus.
Despite this, the pocketbook network has proven to be quite resilient in terms of the ability to engage in certain viral messages and in the personal performance of certain pocket leaders.
hashtag war
The 19J hashtags in their various versions almost completely dominated the list of the 10 most used hashtags throughout the day, even considering the overall volume of tweets collected on the various debates in Brazil.
Even filtering the collection for the topic of general health or coronavirus, hashtags on 19J feature the most in the top 10.
The issues of health and the coronavirus are the most debated, but the impeachment program also remains among the top public interests.
Opposition dominates debate as agenda is Bolsonaro
In continuous surveillance since 2018, we see that with rare exceptions, Bolsonaro and his supporters dominate the debate concerning the president and the government.
This means that every mention of Bolsonaro is generally overwhelmingly favorable to him on networks, thanks to militant action by his supporters, which generates a false perception that the majority of Brazilians support him.
But June 19 was one of the few cases where mentions of the name “Bolsonaro” were not dominated by the president himself or his supporters, given the ten most viral posts about the president.
Comparing the top 10 posts on Bolsonaro on the two networks, almost all were critical of the president. On Facebook as on Twitter, the influencers of the debate on the president were for the most part opposite profiles.
An indicator to assess the anti-Bolsonarist campaign
The ability to go viral is an important indicator when evaluating the performance of the anti-Bolsonarista campaign which took place on June 19, demonstrating the potential in terms of image damage that this type of action can cause to the president. , as well as the limits of Bolsonarist activism in its ability to viralize content, because, in general, content goes viral when its narrative makes sense to the majority of the population by portraying reality.
But, if we stop watching all content and focus solely on the topic of health and Covid, almost all of the ten most viral posts across Brazil repudiate the actions of the Bolsonaro government during the pandemic.
Admittedly, the victory of the 19J demonstrators took place in the networks, but it is neither absolute nor lasting.
So far, we’ve shown a more focused view of what content has gone viral on networks, showing that Bolsonaro’s base was not mobilized enough to go viral with more convenient content for the president.
Essa constatação fica clara quando comparamos os graphics de desempenho between Bolsonaro e Lula no Twitter no dia 19 de junho.
Bolsonaro obtains um valor infimo from índice de mobilização da sua própria base no Twitter, inquanto Lula conseguiu mobilizar quase a metade de seus seguidores.
Bolsonaro has the greatest relative space, meaning he is the most mentioned politician on networks, but his popularity is not at its peak, indicating that around 20% of all Content posted on the chair is negative and 80% is neutral or positive.
This is Bolsonaro’s strength and the limit of the 19J movement: the president may not have made his content viral, but by spreading messages of support he managed to outnumber his opponents.
Pocketnarism remains a giant of political communication
Pocketnarismo therefore remains a giant of political communication on social networks, and it will take much more than a 19J to defeat it in what has become its natural habitat.
Bolsonaro suffered a defeat in the 19J in the sense that dominating the most viral posts and the thematic agenda with agendas and frameworks unfavorable to the president, besides helping to form an anti-Bolsonarist public opinion, gives the impression that those who support him are always less.
As the charts show, Bolsonaro has a near zero growth rate in his follower base on June 19, especially compared to Lula, who also surpasses him in terms of positive content and network engagement capacity.
Besides the question of the electoral race, which is not the subject of this article, these indicators suggest a qualitative dimension on the stories which make more or less sense today in terms of reality.
If Bolsonaro is not able to mobilize his own base as before and does not grow in terms of followers, it is because his ability to tell reality is no longer as credible as before.
On the contrary, Lula seems to be doing better in this area, or at least he seems to embody a greater capacity for consensus when he engages on topics relevant to Brazilians.