Logo of the National Institute of Public Communication of Science and Technology (INCT-CPCT)
This Wednesday (12/06), the General Research Coordinator of the Internet and Social Network Studies Laboratory at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (NetLab UFRJ), Débora Salles, took part in the project “The science of scientific dissemination”, a series of videos on YouTube created by the National Institute of Public Communication of Science and Technology (INCT-CPCT).
The article, entitled “An analysis of the 2020 forest fires on Twitter”, analyzes the use of computational propaganda in the Brazilian environmental debate, focusing on the discussion surrounding forest fires in the Amazon in 2020 on X (Formerly Twitter).
“We sought to understand the role that these inauthentic accounts play and to what extent they are reverberating and amplifying certain ideological positions [..] Our main results show that inauthentic profiles artificially inflated, especially in the amplification of the #StopFakeNewsAboutAmazon campaign. We saw that these automated accounts promoted environmental disinformation, denying the existence of these fires and claiming the country’s sovereignty over the Amazon rainforest.” said Débora Salles.