Reverse influence: the social production of disinformation in the 2022 Brazilian general election

This paper examines the shortcomings of applying prescriptive notions of disinformation to the 2022 Brazilian general election. We unpack the disinformation framework based on the assumption of linear cascades of influence with three case studies drawing from the visual analysis of Facebook posts during the election, text analysis of posts by elected representatives on Twitter, and four in-depth interviews with Brazilian fact-checkers. The case studies show that the identification of disinformation in contentious electoral contexts is often at odds with the notion of disinformation as strategic deceptions and manipulation attacks. Our results show that ‘bottom-up’ forms of disinformation flow from sparsely distributed communities to the political elite and back, a diffusion mechanism at odds with the assumptions of the cascading flow of influence. The results also foreground the social production of disinformation, a process that is reversible and non-linear, as political elites and grassroots communities work together to weave meaningful if misleading narratives. We conclude by discussing the implications of our study and the limits of prescriptive notions of disinformation in contexts where the accuracy of the shared information is of limited importance to communities coming together in fellowship and commonality.