CONSTRUINDO O ‘MITO’ E DEMONIZANDO A ESQUERDA: UMA ANÁLISE DE DISCURSO CRÍTICA DAS DEZ FAKE NEWS MAIS COMPARTILHADAS VIA FACEBOOK E WHATSAPP DURANTE A ELEIÇÃO PRESIDENCIAL NO BRASIL EM 2018

The dissemination of fake news, by means of texts which were massively shared on social media and spread disinformation among the population was a phenomenon that marked the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections. In October 2018, Revista Exame published a report containing a ranking with the ten most shared fake news throughout the first round of the presidential elections. Using the three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis proposed by Norman Fairclough (2003), I analyzed the ten texts of the ranking, identifying their structure, and how the processes of lexicalization, intertextuality and interdiscursivity appear within the corpus; based on Wardle (2017), I investigated what kind of information disorder was used; finally, according to Thompson (2011), I examined how ideology operates in these texts. Throughout the analysis I have noticed a superlexicalization of a nationalist ideal linked to the then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. Two semantic-discursive fields stood out: the representation of Jair Bolsonaro and that of politicians associated with the left-wing spectrum. Bolsonaro is represented throughout the texts as the candidate who has validation from the public. Left-wing politicians are represented as enemies who need to be fought and who exhibit morally questionable behavior. It was possible to conclude that the texts presented here corroborate a movement of the middle-class in support of the candidate Jair Bolsonaro (Cavalcante, 2020), being complacent with his neo-fascist discourse in favor of a neoliberal/meritocratic ideology, depicting left-wing politicians as executioners of nationalist progress.