Slide from the report ‘Evangelical Media Typology’ / Credits: NetLab UFRJ
Members of the Internet and Social Network Studies Laboratory at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (NetLab UFRJ) participated in a webinar held this Thursday (21/08) with various civil society organizations dedicated to the study of relations between religion and society. The event invited researchers to speak about the project “Tipologia De Fontes Para Mídia Evangélica No Mundo Digital" (The Typology of Sources for Evangelical Media in the Digital World).
Analyses were presented on the mass sharing of political and disinformative content published on profiles and pages of evangelical leaders and organizations on Facebook during the Covid-19 Parliamentary Inquiry. Researchers observed coordinated news dissemination and sources using disinformation strategies on the pages of political actors, interest groups, religious leaders and influencers. The study is developed within the line of research ‘The Far-Right, Politics and Disinformation’.
About the subject
In Brazil, evangelical Christians project themselves as a group with common demands and gain political, cultural and social prominence. NetLab seeks to map the evangelical online media ecosystem and analyze the main agents and sources that use disinformation strategies to target the evangelical public during the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Pandemic.
Among the discourses propagated, we observed narratives of scientific denialism and political polarization, driven by junk news portals. The publications include challenges to the effectiveness of vaccines, speech in defense of individual freedoms, criticism of the Covid Parliamentary Inquiry, as well as framing churches as essential services and pastors as frontline workers.
By studying the evangelical media ecosystem NetLab seeks to identify possible harmful and politically biased content within this medium and to highlight the risk of manipulation to this audience.