Disinformation and attacks on the 2022 Elections in Brazil

Brazil is currently living a turmoil in its democratic and constitutional stance. The Human Rights Watch added Brazil to the autocratic leaders’ club after the election of Bolsonaro. The 2019 World Human Rights Report pointed a “great risk to public safety” as he “openly encourages the use of lethal force by the military and police”, also highlighting the threats arising from his endorsement of torture and instigation of violence against opposers and the press. Additionally, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) downgraded Brazil’s classification from a liberal democracy to an electoral democracy in 2020. In 2021, reinforcing the existence of a broad global movement of autocratization, V-Dem warned that, in a period of ten years Brazil ranked 4th among the 10 main countries that advanced in this process of democratic erosion.

For these reasons, Brazilian democracy needs the support of the national and international academic community to map attacks and to commit to defending democracy and improving democratic processes.
The present interest group seeks to strengthen conversations surrounding the Brazilian Case and its implications at national and international level. We propose to advance this by strengthening DEMOS, an already established Observatory, which functions as a forum for schollars and other authorities.

The Observatory’s main objective is to build an articulated and mobilized multidisciplinary and interinstitutional academic system for mapping the threats and attacks on Brazilian democracy and the electoral system as well as assisting in the normative defense of democracy against disinformation campaigns.