Dinâmicas comunicacionais em redes sociais digitais: radicalização nos grupos de mobilização política

Abstract

The research aims to examine communication dynamics on digital social networks, specifically focusing on political mobilization groups on WhatsApp and Telegram. It seeks to answer the following question: how do these messaging services, as means of communication, favor political radicalization? Cultural phenomena such as fake news, post-truth, political polarization, and denialisms have emerged over the last decade, often associated with far-right political movements. Digital social networks, with their ability to decentralize information distribution, have contributed to the disarticulation of the traditional media's ability to establish hegemonic discourses. They have proven to be environments for the creation of shared meanings and sociability. Within the realm of research on creative processes in communication and culture, mediation emerges as a pivotal concept for the dynamics of signification. WhatsApp and Telegram are ubiquitously used by Brazilians for various purposes, ranging from conversations between family and friends to political mobilization. The research methodology interwines an ecological perspective of communication with a case study approach. It consists of an archaeology of messaging media, an examination of the materialities of WhatsApp and Telegram, and a case study of communicational dynamics of far-right Brazilian political groups on Telegram, including a cartography of its imaginary. The analysis of communication dynamics occurs on at least two levels: from the singularity (individual), derived from the examination of media materialities and the relationships between users and technologies, grounded in Gibson's Theory of Affordances; and from the collective (social), based on Peirce's Semiotics and Cesarino's reverse politics concepts