The report of MonitorA, an observatory of political and electoral violence against female candidates on social media, was launched in April during an event attended by representatives from academia, civil society, the press, and the public and private sectors. The project is born from a partnership between InternetLab, AzMina Magazine, and Núcleo Jornalismo. The report, which is also available on the project’s official website, presents the main information about MonitorA, as well as an analysis of the narratives present in the 2022 elections and reports based on the data obtained throughout the research.

Born in 2020, during the Brazilian municipal elections, MonitorA emerged with the intention of demonstrating more concretely how political violence occurred on social networks. At that time, the country was facing the Covid-19 pandemic, and the internet was increasing even more its importance for the electoral race. In the 2020 edition, we identified that political violence on the internet very specifically targeted certain social groups marked mainly by gender, race, sexuality, and age group, having an especially negative impact on the exercise of political life by women, black people, the elderly, and LGBTQIAP+.

In 2022, the scenario was not exactly the same. The recognition of this social phenomenon had increased and Brazil even had political violence made into a crime. Social and legal recognition, however, were not enough guarantees that political violence would not mark the coming elections. In view of this, the objective of the MonitorA changed: in its second edition, MonitorA did not intend to demonstrate that the problem of gender political violence existed, but it was necessary to observe it and expand on what we had to say about it. 

We sought, then, to answer the following questions:

1. How can we defend the possibility that politicians continue to be held accountable without legitimizing that candidates suffer harassment, psychological and misogynistic violence, or other kinds of violence?
2. Is all hostile language directed at candidates a case of political violence? Or can we sometimes be faced with an offense that is moral, which can be considered an attack, but is not necessarily political violence?
3. Should all hostile and potentially harmful comments be removed from platforms?
4. How can an attack be differentiated from an insult, even though even a mere insult could be massively repeated online and, not only sound disrespectful, but possibly bring about harm to the victim?
5. How to ensure that male and female voters can show displeasure towards the candidates and, at the same time, ensure the safety and integrity of the candidates and the democratic process?
6. Have the terms of use of social platforms been enough to contain this kind of situation against candidates? Should political figures be treated as such as any other public figures?

Based on this question, we organized: i) the analysis of the data collected between the months of September and November 2022; ii) analyses on the applicability and effectiveness of the Brazilian Gender Political Violence Law during elections carried out by the Núcleo de Inteligência Eleitoral, under the coordination of lawyer Samara Castro; and, finally, iii) dialogues about data on TikTok, part of netnography elaborated in consultancy by Lux Ferreira with InternetLab.

The work of analyzing the data collected was done jointly by the three organizations. The data analysis tool, on the other hand, was developed by Núcleo Jornalismo, and the glossaries of terms researched, by InternetLab and Revista AzMina. MonitorA collected comments related to 174 female and 24 male candidates for state and federal executive and legislative positions on the Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram platforms. Additionally, we also monitored the accounts of Janja da Silva and Michelle Bolsonaro, to understand how political violence also reached the candidates’ family members. In total, 1,697,774 tweets; 892,500 comments on Instagram; 167,095 comments on YouTube; and 65,761 comments on Facebook were collected. This data was filtered based on the lexicon of offensive terms and then manually analyzed. 

Based on the data analysis, some of the results we found were:

• When analyzing the offensive content directed to the wives of candidates Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro for the Presidency of the Republic, we noticed that religiosity and notions of morality gave the keynote of the offensive narratives against Janja and Michelle on Twitter and Instagram. In the comments with hostile content directed to Michelle, religion appears mainly linked to religious moral propositions, and accusations that the former first lady was “not a real Christian” were common. Regarding Janja, the attacks and insults published focused mainly on religious intolerance against religions of African origin.  These cases show that political violence is not restricted to those running for office, but may also affect people directly connected to the candidates.
• The expression “you are a disgrace” had a high incidence in the collections, appearing in different speeches, such as “you are a disgrace to black people”; “you are a disgrace to women” etc. It is worth remembering that this type of narrative did not occur without context. During the presidential debate on August 28, 2022, then-re-election candidate Jair Bolsonaro (PL) attacked journalist Vera Magalhaes, claiming that she was “a disgrace to Brazilian journalism.” The use of shaming mechanisms is a common practice in misogynistic and racist attacks, and can also be associated with discrediting, since comments of this kind are often associated with claims such as “you are worthless”, reiterating the intention to discredit and inferiorize the target of the comment.
• The 2022 elections had the highest turnout of trans candidates ever recorded in Brazil. MonitorA monitored the social networks of 11 of the 78 registered candidates in this election, analyzing both offensive content and the main narratives that were constructed about these candidates. We observed that much of the political debate in which trans and transvestite candidates tried to engage in on social media during the electoral campaign ended up being hijacked by ideological-party conflicts, political violence, debates about public safety, and disputes over the representation of historically minority groups.

There were also 13 recommendations to the sectors involved in the research, which allow us to glimpse into ways to combat, prevent, and monitor political violence:

• Internet Platforms and Application Providers: i) Commitment to the development of protective policies and user guidelines in the face of political violence; ii) Enhancement of mechanisms for access of data and transparency for researchers; iii) Commitment to the protective enforcement and the transparency of policies and user guidelines; iv) Enhancement of policies aimed at public persons and public office-holders; v) Enhancement of platforms’ internal reporting channels;
• Legislative: vi) Improvement of legislation on gender political violence, with inclusion of protective measures following the Brazilian Gender Political Violence Law and ensuring the accountability of political parties;
• Judiciary and Attorney General’s Office: vii) Improvement of search channels and transparency mechanisms; viii) Collection and compilation of data on gender political violence; ix) Attorney General’s Office: improvement of denunciation channels; x) Construction of strategies, in the scope of the Electoral Justice, to face political violence and misinformation based on gender;
• Executive: xi) Inclusion of the confrontation of political violence as part of the governmental agenda;
• Political Parties: xii) Improve tools to support female candidates in cases of political violence, create mechanisms for denunciation and internal accountability; and 
• Civil Society: xiii)Create and strengthen networks about elections and violence (political and electoral, gender, race, etc.).

Access the full MonitorA report in Portuguese and English. And visit the project’s website, where you will find data from the first and second editions of MonitorA.