Taylor & Francis The enforced demise of Clyde Miller’s Institute for Propaganda Analysis—shut down in 1942 under accusations of communist sympathy and insufficient loyalty to the American ideal—resonates today amid coordinated campaigns to silence disinformation researchers. This essay examines these campaigns, focusing particularly on Brazil. It begins by situating disinformation research within a matrix of democracy and autocracy, arguing that under current conditions, disi

Applied Network Science This paper examines political communication on Brazilian X/Twitter during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a period marked by tensions between federal authorities, state governors, and media actors. We consider how the platform reflects the circulation of policy-related narratives, including controversial positions such as early treatment with hydroxychloroquine. To support the analysis of large-scale interaction data, we construct a retweet

Political Communication Report The current digital architecture is largely grounded in data regimes, sociotechnical ecosystems that regulate the relationship between digital infrastructures, our online footprint, and private appropriation of public data. Under the current data regime, public social media data is not a freely accessible digital common (Fuster Morell, 2010) but part of broader digital enclosures through which technological corporations extract and fence off com

Taylor & Francis Tech oligarchy arises when platform companies are dominated to a singular extent by a small group of very powerful and extremely wealthy men who have played uniquely influential roles in structuring technological development … that align with their personal beliefs and who now wield unprecedented informational, sociotechnical, and political power. (Cohen, 2025) Cohen’s landmark intervention refracts a contemporary zeitgeist of elite capture in which concentr

Environmental Communication Environmental NGOs in Brazil have become a target of disinformation campaigns, despite their long-standing role in advocating for sustainable policies. This paper investigates how Brazil’s digital media framed the 2023 Parliamentary Inquiry Commission into NGOs operating in the Amazon, revealing the media’s role in advancing legal harassment and disinformation. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines computational text analysis and critical di

Taylor & Francis The 2020 Amazon Fire Season crisis can be summarized by record monthly deforestation numbers and by the negligence of the Brazilian government. Considering the political scenario in Brazil as a fertile ground for false information, we question which discourses on the Amazon forest fires were constructed by legacy media outlets and junk news sources during the 2020 fire season in Brazil. By means of a critical discourse analysis, we observe the ideological str

Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of COMPÓS This paper investigates how advertising content exploits the credibility of personalities in science and media, as well as the infrastructure of digital platforms, to generate profit and influence behavior. We identified 3,710 fraudulent ads using Drauzio Varella's image to promote treatments without scientific basis, displayed on Meta platforms between July and December 2024. Data collection was conducted via a scraper for dai

Taylor & Francis Almost a century since the birth of modern Propaganda Studies, familiar dynamics continue to drive the literature. With the majority of studies coming out of the Global North, localized and culturally specific research from elsewhere is indeed thriving but requires increased visibility and a sustainable platform in order to transcend the status of academic anomaly. Set against this backdrop, this essay reflects on the interface between pro-agribusiness propag

P2P Inovação The deliberate production and circulation of disinformation on the Internet goes beyond science and politics and has already reached companies and corporations. In this study, we aimed to identify and analyze the chain of disinformation that unfolds from false advertisements for Senac's free courses circulating on the Meta Advertising Network, especially on Facebook and Instagram. Using Meta's ad library as a tool for data collection, the research identified that

AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research This study examines the indirect lobbying strategies deployed by major digital platforms aiming to oppose Brazil’s "Fake News Bill", which sought to regulate internet intermediaries in the country. Drawing from primary data collected during the lobbying campaign in April-May 2023, the study analyzes platform ads, search engine recommendations, and direct user communications. The findings reveal systematic violations of platform polici

Proceedings of the 22nd National Meeting of Journalism Researchers Local media "news deserts" in the Legal Amazon Zone are fertile ground for socio-environmental disinformation, which discredits the work of organized civil society. This article investigates local media coverage of the work of socio-environmental organizations in the Amazon region before and during the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee into NGOs, which took place in 2023. We systematically analyzed 2,261 article

P2P Inovation Despite measures to reduce the prevalence of attacks on sexual and gender minorities on digital platforms, discriminatory and hateful advertisements have been promoted by politicians during election campaigns around the world. This article analyzes the discursive and targeting strategies concerning the LGBTQIAP+ community on Meta's platforms during the 2022 electoral campaign in Brazil, in order to understand how the rights of these groups were instrumentalized