Prelims

Series Editor

Dr Athina Karatzogianni

About the Series Editor

Dr Athina Karatzogianni is an Associate Professor at the University of Leicester, UK. Her research focusses on the intersections between digital media theory and political economy, in order to study the use of digital technologies by new sociopolitical formations.

Published Books in This Series

Digital Materialism: Origins, Philosophies, Prospects by Baruch Gottlieb

Nirbhaya, New Media and Digital Gender Activism by Adrija Dey

Digital Life on Instagram: New Social Communication of Photography by Elisa Serafinelli

Internet Oligopoly: The Corporate Takeover of Our Digital World by Nikos Smyrnaios

Digital Activism and Cyberconflicts in Nigeria: Occupy Nigeria, Boko Haram and MEND by Shola A. Olabode

Platform Economics: Rhetoric and Reality in the ‘Sharing Economy’ by Cristiano Codagnone

Communication as Gesture: Media(tion), Meaning, & Movement by Michael Schandorf

Chinese Social Media: Face, Sociality, and Civility by Shuhan Chen and Peter Lunt

Posthumanism in Digital Culture: Cyborgs, Gods and Fandom by Callum T.F. McMillan

Media, Technology and Education in a Post-Truth Society: From Fake News, Datafication and Mass Surveillance to the Death of Trust by Alex Grech

Environmental Security in Greece: Perceptions From Industry, Government, NGOs and the Public by Charis(Harris) Gerosideris

3D Printing Cultures, Politics and Hackerspaces by Leandros Savvides

Fantasy, Neoliberalism and Precariousness: Coping Strategies in the Cultural Industries by Jérémy Vachet

Crisis Communication in China: Strategies Taken by the Chinese Government and Online Public Opinion by Wei Cui

Digital Politics, Digital Histories, Digital Futures: New Approaches for Historicising, Politicising and Imagining the Digital by Adi Kuntsman and Liu Xin

Forthcoming Titles

Duty to Revolt: Transnational and Commemorative Aspects of Revolution by George Souvlis and Athina Karatzogianni

Massively Marginal: Kuaishou as China's Subaltern Platform by Dino Ge Zhang, Jian Xu and Gabriele de Seta

Algorithmic Governance: Institutional Design and Organisational Innovations by Ioannis Avramopoulos

Fractal Leadership: The Technosocial Transformation of Leadership in Social Movements by Athina Karatzogianni and Jacob Matthews

In Search of Answers

While in concluding phase of this book, a quote from the 1982s book Memorial do Convento (Baltasar and Blimunda, in the English version) by the late Portuguese writer and Nobel Literature winner José Saramago emerged from the back of my memory: ‘Everything in the world is giving answers; what lingers is the time of the questions’. As it spontaneously re-played in my mind, it layered another meaning in my past interpretation of first solely relating it to life's truthful significance as missed while we inattentively carry on. Resurgent in a present where I was attentively trying to articulate answers for a changing political scenery in my home country, Brazil, it made me remember when I started to intuit the need for questions.

The year was 2013 when national mass protests mobilised through social media, later called the June Days, spiralled against the political establishment after police violence, with the first street signs of authoritarian reminiscence. I remember a specific discomfort while watching on TV demonstrators in Brasília taking the Esplanade of the Ministries, occupying Congress's marquee and trying to invade Itamaraty (the Brazilian Foreign Ministry), including by breaking some of its window panes. With heterogenic agenda and actors, they seemed a catharsis for the sake of protesting, a movement aiming to replace the status quo without a clear picture of how and why. In the following years, political instability increased with the Car Wash anti-corruption operation and an impeachment movement against the left-wing president Dilma Rousseff. Plus, there was also an overwhelming economic crisis and recession. During this time, the first spread-out mobilisation grew around the former captain Jair Bolsonaro, who managed to homogenise and centralise a disperse discontentment feeling in his far-right figure.

The 2018 elections arrived as challenging times. I became obsessed with following political news and going down the rabbit hole of Facebook pages with right-wing content. They revealed an unknown Brazil, where concepts of democracy, communism and socialism seemed disrupted, concerning a different language than mine. Foremost, the then-polarised electoral context disclosed colleagues and relatives having the corruption topic as a tie-breaker for their votes. Although a crucial matter, the non-negotiable aspects for me were the principles of human rights and not voting for someone praising the Brazilian dictatorship. Or the manipulation of religion for political gains, putting aside the secularism feature of the state. Or the apology for bearing arms as a solution to security problems. In a random encounter at a bakery, I discussed with a former school-time acquaintance because I had seen her sharing disinformation on social media. At the time, journalists denouncing irregular electoral campaign tactics in the digital environment became a target of online militias. During a trip, I felt sad after knowing a person I have always admired would vote for Bolsonaro out of his aversion to the left-wing party not long ago in power.

Despite not being an enthusiast of this left-wing party myself, evaluating it needed restructuring within the progressist camp, leadership renovation and most self-criticism concerning the series of errors, ethical misdemeanours and mismanagement committed while governing Brazil, I felt an urgency for what I considered as at stake at the time. The democracy recovered over three decades ago, at the corner of Brazilian history, was at risk. And this fear moved me passionately. Although a military coup like the ones staged in South America during the Cold War seemed unthinkable, the fraying of the democratic tissue was at reach. There were multiple examples outside Brazil, with the rising of radical right populism in Europe, the United States, Asia and the Middle East. Thus, Bolsonaro was not a phenomenon limited to Brazil. His emergence told a story far-reaching than my country. As many people choosing to vote for him were reasonable and intelligent, the puzzlement of why he constituted a large base of support within Brazilian society became more pressing. One day at the newsroom, I told a friend: ‘We need to study what is happening’. Hence, the urge for understanding put me on track for writing this book.

In 2019, the first year of Bolsonaro in power, I stopped delaying the plan of studying abroad and moved to the United Kingdom to undertake my MA in International Relations and Global Communications at Manchester Metropolitan University. It was a challenging journey of learning and discovering theories, concepts and studies previously uncharted. Above all, it was a privileged time in which I could distance myself from Brazil to encounter the best instruments to assess it with brand-new eyes. Brazil under Bolsonaro became my dissertation topic, which I had to finish in my home country due to the pandemic and personal issues, cutting short my planned stay in the United Kingdom up to the expiration of my student visa.

This MA final work is the base for the present book. It adds 2020, the first pandemic year, to the 2019 data concerning how Bolsonaro and two of his sons constructed the digital memory of the Brazilian dictatorship. After returning, I sometimes resented not staying abroad as long as I wished. But this research in this final format made me perceive Brazil as the only place I could write this book, applying the foreign tools gathered in my lived reality, eye-witnessing the implications of this government from inside. It was a process of unravelling to myself the discoveries made through this journey, with a mist of anguish and joy for transforming the initial seemingly unattainable distress into logical words on paper. I made something out of the initial discomfort, not letting it settle down, which turned into a source of humble pride. First, I could translate to myself a language seemingly unlearnable at the beginning. With the apprehension of its populist mechanisms, the facts evolving in 2021 and the last election in 2022 stopped feeling nonsensical. The performative acts of Bolsonaro's government had their own rationality and logic, as pointed out by Lacan (2005) concerning populism. Thus, after dwelling on it, I could finally attain what they mean when saying democracy, communism, coup, dictatorship, the people, popular sovereignty and liberty.

Consequently, it was a personal task but hopefully useful for a larger crowd than my own mind. By bringing this book to the public, I hope it is a helpful tool to explain relevant aspects of the Presidency of Bolsonaro, primarily concerning the digital environment and how his movement can still be alive even with him out of office after losing the 2022 election. Besides, this work can handle applicable instruments for researchers in other countries who testify to the ascendancy of far-right movements, especially concerning memory use in the digital space. In that sense, it would be a never-ending work. While potentially enabling conversations with researchers inside Brazil and outside, it can result in better questions. Without, expectantly, lingering on the world's answers.