Abstract
Drs. Medrado and Cabral employ content analysis and observation to investigate the dominant themes on the Facebook pages of Brazil’s Federal Government and of São Paulo State. They compare how economic and health issues relating to the pandemic are addressed in these two—Federal and State—levels of government. The chapter refers to notions of “uncivil society” and “necropolitics,” analyzing how these emerge in a context of accelerated neoliberal reforms. The findings demonstrate that the Federal Government focused on economic measures while there was little coverage of health issues, such as prevention, guidance, and vaccines. In contrast, the State of São Paulo had a predominance of posts about vaccination. Both campaigns were perceived as permanent campaigning strategies rather than as catering for citizens’ needs.
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Notes
- 1.
See: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/brazil/
- 2.
25 February 2022
- 3.
This was the case because many debates revolved around the need to stop police operations in the favelas during the pandemic. Favela activist groups, such as Coletivo Papo Reto, analyzed in our previous study, demonstrated that people were dying of COVID-19 and hunger. They should be spared the police brutality and the killing of innocent people, which often characterises these police operations in favela areas.
- 4.
Out of these 12 posts, 6 posts were coded as “prevention and guidance” only, while 6 fell into the prevention category but also mentioned vaccines, thus they were counted in both categories (“prevention and guidance,” and “vaccines”).
- 5.
Two of these posts were coded in ro categories “reports/accountability” and “prevention/guidance”; three of them were coded in three categories, “reports/accountability” and “vaccines,” and one was coded as “reports/accountability” only.
- 6.
See original posts here: https://www.facebook.com/governosp/posts/10160163013228653. A summarized translation from Portuguese could be: “The State of São Paulo is acquiring two million rapid antigen test kits for COVID-19. With an investment of 12 million Reais, this initiative aims to increase testing and monitoring for COVID-19 cases. Preliminary data before the end of December shows that São Paulo has performed 22.4 million tests during the pandemic, becoming the State with the highest number of tests in Brazil.”
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Medrado, A., Cabral, A. (2022). Contrasting Federal and State Government Communication on Facebook in Brazil: Contradictory Messages and Realities. In: Maarek, P.J. (eds) Manufacturing Government Communication on Covid-19 . Springer Studies in Media and Political Communication. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09230-5_9
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