We all like to make jokes about stories we hear being ‘fake news’ and poke fun at the politicians who debunk true stories about them as invalid, but the issues of the fake news phenomenon is much more serious than some people realize. A recent example is a story from a Portuguese tabloid that became famous in Brazil. The story surrounded popular Brazilian drag queen Pabllo Vittar was getting funding to host a Kids T.V. show on Globo, that would cause the station to 50 million viewers. The story was debunked soon after its release, but had already become widespread across the internet through media sites like Facebook and shared over 110,000 times. Fake News Researcher Pablo Ortellado, a professor employed at the University at the University of Sao Paulo, argues the articles spread is due to the use of the messaging system WhatsApp.
http://mysterious-song-contest.wikia.com/wiki/Pabllo_Vittar
That’s a lot to take in at first, so let us dive into the Fake News aspect first. This wave of fake news is world wide issue, but Brazil has expressed some of the most concern. The article claims that in 2016 tabloid stories outperformed actual news, and that the National police are planning to punish those who create false articles. Our friend from Sao Paulo ties the growth of these articles to Facebook’s WhatsApp, “We have this new phenomenon of fake news sites specifically targeting WhatsApp — this is probably going to be a problem in the 2018 [national] elections,”. Unlike public social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, WhatsApp is private. It gives people the ability to ‘create echo-chambers’ of their own opinion. The article reports that the app is used by roughly 60% of the population, and solley used as a social media platform by 35% of its users.
There is a lot of political unrest in Brazil at the moment. It is broiling with political corruption, racial tension, and political polarization. From the University of Texas-Austin professor Rosental Alves brings discusses how WhatsApp is a breeding ground for more instability, “Families and every group you can imagine creates their own private social media network on WhatsApp, and those bubbles are totally out of the control of anybody else…”. Take the issue of echo chambers that was already mentioned into considerations. People who enter these species are looking for a specific voice and opinion that allains with their own, and articles that validate their opinions are going to be widespread in these chat rooms without any question to the articles validity.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323836504578553643435119434
The national police have already stated that it is prepared to release a statement that they would release a task force to suppress the app use. This response is heavy handed, but not entirely new. Brazilian judges have already banned the app on three separate occasions, and a Facebook official was briefly arrested in 2016 for similar charges. The Superior Electoral Court in Brazil has already decided that the military will not be involved in repressing the app, but the app will come under fire again soon as Brazil enters into one of its most politically charged elections.
Something that struck out to me in this article is the way Brazil is painted as a place of political turmoil, and military strength to the point where it can decide to suppress news articles. To me it seemed to play on the stereotype of the Latin American dictatorship. The article emphasized the military power Brazil holds over its population, and stressed the political tension in the country today. It compared the political tension and discourse of tabloid articles to that of the U.S., and how our 2016 election controversy is similar to the issues that Brazil faces today.
The most recent article that we read for class, “The Country of the Present, or Leaving the Future in the Past”, discusses the rapid growth and political stability of Brazil. This article paints a picture of Brazil that mirrors what this article reports. While what we read does nod toward the racial tension and inequality present in Brazil, it seems to be overshadowed by Brazil’s rapidly growing economy. Brazil now seems to have caught up to the world powers today and has come to face the same issues of political instability that they face.
Here’s the URL of the article with the sources it used,
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/mbpkyv/whatsapp-is-causing-a-serious-fake-news-problem-in-brazil