Risk Map: Bolsonarist silence on the networks sparked an alert in Flávio’s campaign

The crisis involving the senator and pre-candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) and the former banker Daniel Vorcaro produced a phenomenon considered unusual by political analysts and experts in digital monitoring: the silence of Bolsonarism itself on social media.

Used to quickly responding to attacks against its members and dominating online discussions, the militancy linked to former president Jair Bolsonaro reacted in a more dispersed, less vocal way and without a clear narrative after the release of the audios published by the website The Intercept Brazil.

In the analysis of participants in the Risk Map, a policy program of the InfoMoneythis Friday (22), the behavior became one of the main signs of concern within Flávio’s pre-campaign.

“55% to 60% of mentions about politics on digital are produced by 5% of voters, because they are in fact very vocal profiles. This time we didn’t see two vocal profiles, one attacking and one defending, we saw one attacking and the other silent. So, yes, there is a touchiness”, said Renato Dolci, political scientist and data director at Timelens.

According to him, the volume of interactions about the case was extremely high, but unlike other crises involving Bolsonarism, the right had difficulty building a coordinated public defense.

Reaction capacity

The participants’ assessment is that the crisis hit precisely one of the most sensitive topics for the right, based on the anti-corruption discourse, appropriated by the spectrum in recent years.

Furthermore, the gradual dissemination of information, a strategy used by The Intercept in other revelations, it made it difficult to create a single version to be defended by digital activists.

“What happened this time is that Bolsonarism took an initial blow, they are there trying to process this information, see what the narratives are to try to explain to themselves, what is happening and this is a natural process, we have seen it happen at other times with Bolsonarism. It is a natural process,
and then there is a reorganization”, stated XP political analyst, Vitor Scalet.

According to him, the standard behavior of Bolsonarism tends to be rapid digital mobilization, especially in episodes of political exhaustion. This time, however, the reaction was slower and less intense.

“The volume of Bolsonarists talking about Bolsonarism remains quite low,” he said.

For experts, this does not mean a total absence of engagement from the conservative base, but a change in behavior. Instead of massively producing political content, many users started to just like, share or indirectly interact with publications on the topic.

Crisis burst the bubble

Another factor that drew attention was the speed with which the case managed to leave the traditional political bubble and reach voters less interested in institutional debate.

“The original audio is complex to understand by the reader who has no context,” said Scalet.

According to him, the episode gradually gained strength as the press, memes and explanatory content began to contextualize the case for the broader public that is less consuming of political news.

The combination of audio, political humor and massive circulation on the networks was still considered a providential help to expand the reach of the topic.

“The content was juicy from a media point of view,” said Renato Dolci.

He highlighted that the left was unable to temporarily dominate the digital debate precisely because it found a disorganized opponent from the point of view of digital strategy.

“The left doesn’t dominate a debate when we have two noisy blocs against each other. But this time it happened because one bloc was silent,” he said.

Unconsolidated narrative

Behind the scenes of the PL, the assessment is that part of the difficulty comes from the absence of a stable line of defense. Since the audio leak, Flávio’s allies have presented different versions of the case, including arguments involving a private contract, political persecution and an attempt to associate Banco Master with the PT.

For Renato Dutto, this prevented the Bolsonarist base from finding a consistent discourse to react.

“The actors themselves are not being able to explain the facts, because they are falling into contradictions,” he stated.

The perception among analysts is that the digital reorganization of Bolsonarism should still happen in the coming weeks, but it will directly depend on the existence — or not — of new leaks involving the case.

The Risk Map, the policy program of the InfoMoneyairs every Friday, starting at 5am, on YouTube and your favorite podcast player.