Ideologia e Ethos: estratégias discursivas do deputado Nikolas Ferreira no instagram

Abstract

During the 2018 presidential elections, the systemic use of social media for political engagement and the dissemination of far-right content represented a phenomenon of unprecedented proportions in the country. Part of this engagement was achieved through the manipulation of algorithms by automated software – malicious bots – which artificially amplified the reach of publications and profiles linked to Bolsonarism. Furthermore, there were orchestrated attacks, via the dissemination of fake news against opponents of the then-candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, through WhatsApp. In this social media scenario, the reach achieved by far-right politicians influenced public opinion and the behavior of millions of brazilians who rallied around a "rhetoric of hate" that divided the country. Among them, federal deputy Nikolas Ferreira stands out, a parliamentarian who presents himself as an evangelical christian, right-wing conservative, defender of the "traditional family" and supporter of Jair Bolsonaro. He is the Brazilian politician with the highest social media engagement and the second with the highest number of followers on Instagram, totaling 18 million. The choice of the research corpus is therefore justified: the videos with the highest engagement published by him on Instagram, from January 2024 to January 2025. From a theoretical-methodological point of view, this study resorts to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) — notably the three-dimensional model proposed by Norman Fairclough — to identify the discursive elements that compose Nikolas Ferreira's rhetorical strategies. It also relies on Enunciative-Discursive Analysis and the notion of discursive ethos, as developed by Dominique Maingueneau, with the aim of comprehending the image of self (ethos) that the congressman constructs in his Instagram videos. This dissertation proposes to answer the following questions: (a) what discursive elements compose Nikolas Ferreira's rhetorical strategies on this platform? (b) what image of self (ethos) does he construct on Instagram? and (c) what ideological mechanisms, present in the transcripts of his videos, can be identified through the articulation between CDA and Enunciative-Discursive Analysis?1 Finally, this study reaffirms the urgency of critical research that keeps pace with the increasing sophistication of disinformation mechanisms, algorithmic opacity, and discursive processes in the digital environment. Its ultimate purpose is twofold: it aims to develop not only robust academic materials, but also effective media literacy tools, in order to address the challenges posed by the new digital public sphere