CNSC Ph.D. student Tayrine Dias coauthors a new paper published in the most recent volume of the journal Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais titled “O ativismo de hashtags contra e a favor do impeachment de Dilma Rousseff” (“Hashtag activism for and against Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment” in English). In this paper, Tayrine and her coauthor, Marisa von Bülow, examine the political contention of supporters and opponents of former president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, on social media, and reveal the underlying breadth of these networks of actors. Check out the links section to read the full paper.
Abstract: The impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was the result of a long and contentious process. Over the course of almost two years, Rousseff’s allies and opposition took to the streets and to social media to try to influence the process. Actors’ digital activism generated political networks based on hashtags in favor and against the President. This article analyses these networks, based on data from retweets that mentioned hashtags in favor and against the impeachment, on two days: March 13 and 18, 2016. The results show the hierarchical character of this process of message diffusion, which is concentrated in a small number of accounts. These networks, however, are part of a much more complex web of online and offline ties, which connect individuals as well as transnational groups, and which sought to influence the meanings of Rousseff’s impeachment through different digital strategies.
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Photo by Seema Krishnakumar under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.