Activists, politicians, and media: the relationships established by the far right with the media sphere
Abstract
This article analyses how institutional and non-institutional actors within the Brazilian far right engage with journalistic practices and media organisations. Previous studies on conflicts with media groups have largely focused on the behaviour of politicians and political parties. However, the far right in Brazil is politically diverse in its composition, and social media platforms enable a wide range of voices to influence the digital public sphere. In this context, the article compares discursive manifestations on Twitter, using the origin of the actors—whether institutional or non-institutional—as the independent variable. A total of 4,888 tweets referring to the media, published between 2019 and 2022, were analysed. The study examines the type of journalism referenced by these actors to determine whether the tweets contained attacks or criticism, and compares the data across far-right subgroups. The findings confirm that the degree of institutionalisation shapes the behaviour of these groups. Non-institutional actors are more likely to attack the press and rely more frequently on hyperpartisan media as sources, whereas state actors tend to use official government communications in their discourse.
Keywords
journalism, right wing, mainstream media, hyperpartisan mediaReferences
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