Attacks on candidates extend to supporters in the 2nd round of elections
Manuela Davila (PCdoB), who is running for mayor of Porto Alegre, remains the most attacked candidate, reveals monitoring of political gender violence on social networks.
Originally published by Jamile Santana in the magazine AzMina.
Warning: The report below shows explicit excerpts of misogynist and racist content. We chose not to censor them because we think it is important to exemplify how violent the debate is on networks, how political violence against women spreads through networks and is sexist in its forms, which terms are frequently used and how we can identify it.
Having reached the second round in the dispute for the Porto Alegre City Hall, Manuela D’Ávila (PCdoB) took the lead in an unfortunate ranking: she is, by far, the candidate in the country that received the most offenses on Twitter and Instagram during the last days of the election campaign. In addition, in the second round, in addition to being the target of insults that allude to her intellectuality, political ideology, mental health or the moral aspects of her life, political gender violence extended to her supporters.
When publicly declaring her support for Manuela on November 17, the former Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva (REDE) received, in two days, at least 150 offensive comments, an average of 3 tweets with cursing per hour. She was called “old” with pejorative terms like “mummy” and “turtle”, and also “ugly” and “hypocritical”.
The offensive tweets were identified in the second stage of MonitorA, a project by the magazine AzMina along with InternetLab, which collects and analyzes comments directed at candidates from across the political spectrum to understand the dynamics of political gender violence during elections. Between November 15 – 18, 347,400 tweets were collected that cite 58 male and female candidates running in the second round in municipalities in 13 states in the country. 20 candidates for mayor and their opponents were monitored, in addition to 15 vice-mayors and three candidates for city council Of these, 109,400 tweets were targeted at the candidates, and 8,000 contained offensive terms. Among 2,390 tweets with offensive terms that had one or more likes or retweets, 17.3% (415) were direct offenses against the candidates. Manuela D’Ávila is targeted in 90% of the attacks carried out in the analyzed period.
For Fernanda Mallak, doctoral student in sociology at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) and consultant at Tewá 225, this is a macho response to the active entry of women into politics: Manuela D’Avila, for example, not only reached the second round but also defeated the current mayor of Porto Alegre Nelson Marchezan Júnior (PSDB) at the polls.
Her political presence has also been built over time. She was the youngest council member in the history of Porto Alegre, elected in 2004, elected federal deputy in 2006, and re-elected in 2010, achieving voting records. However, in the offenses identified by MonitorA, there is no mention or criticism about her performance in these positions.
“Modern society, in general, has prerogatives for the control of bodies, by various instruments and techniques, which we cannot even access, and where we are blocked, as individuals. And when it comes to women’s bodies, public space has historically been blocked”, says the sociologist. “We are living in an interesting moment in which women start to occupy those spaces that historically have been occupied by men. And then, constructing an analysis from this perspective, violence and harassment have been used as a way to try to block this access”.
In the second round, in addition to the tweets that use the term “communist” in a pejorative way, to try to intellectually discredit the candidate, the insults became even more offensive: “trash”, “bandit” and “slut” are among the most used in name calling.
There are also many references to the term “abortionist”, such as defending the legalization of abortion to disqualify Manuela.
Other candidates from the left of the political spectrum were also attacked on Twitter during the second round: Marília Arraes (PT), who is running for the city of Recife (PE), Suely Vilela (PSB) for Ribeirão Preto (SP) and the candidate for vice- mayor of São Paulo Luiza Erundina (PSOL-SP). In the case of Erundina, a large part of the comments alluded to her age, as if that meant she was not qualified. The former mayor of the city of São Paulo and current federal deputy is 85 years old.
Supporters
Of the 1,859 tweets that cited female politicians who declared public support for Manuela on the networks, MonitorA analyzed 686 who had at least three likes or retweets. Of these, 150 were direct offenses to Marina Silva, a former senator from Acre and a former minister of the environment, founder of the Rede Sustentabilidade party. In just two days, three offensive tweets per hour were collected. Age and religion were the main aspects highlighted in insults.
“These online demonstrations against female politicians are a macho response to say that this is not her place because she is fat, ugly, and incapable”. However, practice has shown us just the opposite. It is women who are taking the lead in struggles in various spheres, “concluded Mallak.
“Good people you would never support! You are part of the political gang, of the criminal factions that have always robbed us! You should be ashamed and disappear from the planet, it would be the only good thing you are able to do for the country! ”, wrote a user to Marina Silva.
The same happened with ex-president Dilma Rousseff (PT), who was mentioned in some insults as “an example of the failure of women in politics”. By publicly declaring support for Marília Arraes and Manuela D’Ávila on Twitter, Dilma began to be harassed with even more violent curses, with offensive and sexist content.
On Instagram, 70.7 thousand comments were captured in the accounts of monitored candidates, 28.5 thousand of which were made by female candidates. 514 publications with offensive terms were analyzed. Of these, 61 contained direct insults to the candidates and 50% were directed to Manuela D’Ávila. Next up are candidates Paula Mascarenhas (PSDB), candidate for mayor of Pelotas (RS), with 13.1%, and Loreny (Citizenship), candidate for mayor of Taubaté (SP) with 9.8%.
“God forbid that!!! New Venezuela… two unprepared and without a curriculum to manage cities” (sic), wrote a user in a post.
In analyzing the data, MonitorA identified a trend of difference in the behavior of users in relation to candidates in each social network. Although insults and swear words were present on both platforms, Twitter was more likely to have comments that included incitement to hatred directly against the candidates.
“It is important to highlight some characteristics of this platform that can explain this phenomenon. It is necessary to say that on Twitter you dialogue directly with the profiles that are open, so you can enter into public conversations and easily mark people”, explains Fernanda K. Martins, anthropologist and coordinator of InternetLab’s area of inequalities and identities. “In addition, you have access to tweets that have been liked, retweeted or commented on by others you follow, which also makes the platform more informative and dynamic, serving, at various times, as a thermometer of what is happening on the political scene”.
On Instagram, according to Fernanda, the structure of the site seems to bring a greater concentration of people who follow personalities with whom they have a greater political identity, in addition to allowing those responsible for the candidates’ pages to delete comments or not to show violent markings. “Because of this, on Instagram we noticed a dynamic in which many comments were posted to support the candidates. In this case, the offenses and insults were directed, in a more common way, to opponents and not to the candidates for positions”, she believed.
MonitorA observes political violence against female candidates on social media: It is a project from the magazine AzMina, InterLab, and Works in partnership with the Update Institute. The Volt Data Lab developed the data analysis tool and the hate speech researcher, Yasmin Curzi, developed the glossaries of terms searched.
Through InternetLab, MonitorA is one of the fronts of the Recognize, Resist and Remedy project, a partnership with the Indian organization IT for Change funded by IDRC (International Development Research Center), to research manifestations and problems in confronting online hate speech against women in Brazil and India.