Public Agency - June 30, 2023
For two months, Pública, with the support of the Internet and Social Media Studies Laboratory (NetLab) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), analyzed ads on Meta (Facebook and Instagram), videos on YouTube and other content published on social networks and news sites or not, with the aim of tracking who is behind the spread of climate denialism and environmental misinformation in the country.
The primary sources of disinformation are basically a trio formed by the two figures cited by Nobre – Ricardo Felício, professor of geography at the University of São Paulo (USP), and Luiz Carlos Molion, meteorologist and retired professor at the Federal University of Alagoas ( Ufal) – and agronomist Evaristo de Miranda, recently retired from Embrapa, who became an environmental guru in agribusiness and Jair Bolsonaro.
Their stage, in addition to the agribusiness associations that invite them to lectures, are the digital channels linked to the sector and the extreme right. Miranda and Felício, for example, are regular columnists and frequent sources of reports for Revista Oeste, a publication launched in March 2020 that defines itself as “the first content platform that is 100% committed to the defense of capitalism and the free market”.