The increasing use of the internet in Brazil over the past ten years did not leave politics aside. Over the last decade, the dissemination of social networks and other digital communication and information access tools raised the importance of the internet in the country’s political processes. If electoral campaigns migrate to where readers are currently getting their information and debating politics, this would not be different when it came to the internet. In Brazil, the framework of recent legislative changes reveals that the space for transformations in the ways campaigns happen is ever increasing.

Considering the importance of being close to experts in the practice of Electoral Law and internet policies, InternetLab has organized a study group, gathering researchers and electoral lawyers with the intention of discussing new changes in the electoral laws and their enforcement on the digital environment. The activities that were developed by the group resulted in the publishing of the book “Direito Eleitoral na Era Digital” [in Portuguese], a work that works as a bridge between these two specialized parts of knowledge, establishing a lexicon and a common map of the juridical problems and the risks regarding the rights involved.

The main novelties in the Brazilian electoral legislation were also discussed in InternetLab’s Electoral Rights Special, a series of videos in which the authors of “Direito Eleitoral na Era Digital” talk about some of the topics approached by the book: (i) boosting of electoral propaganda; (ii) use of personal data by electoral campaigns; (iii) bots and electoral rights.

Also within the scope of the project, InternetLab took the discussions about the regulation of political and electoral campaigns on the internet, disinformation, and freedom of expression on the networks to the Center for Law, Internet, and Society (NDIS) of the USP Faculty of Law. In addition to debating the topics, students did interviews with different referential figures in the debate about elections and the internet, which were published on InternetLab’s website.