Crise da democracia e urnas eletrônicas : uma análise de discurso das lives de Jair Bolsonaro

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze Jair Bolsonaro’s discourse in order to answer two main questions: 1) Which meanings and discursive strategies Bolsonaro employ regarding electronic voting machines? 2) How does Bolsonaro use technical-scientific discourses to delegitimize electronic voting machines? Drawing from a database containing transcripts of 181 livestreams conducted by the former president between 2019 and 2022, excerpts from 34 livestreams were selected, in which Bolsonaro mentioned the electronic voting machines and alleged the possibility of electoral fraud. Building on literature on the democracy crisis and populism, with a focus on the notion of conspiracy theories, the concept of “conspiratorial populism” is proposed to understand bolsonarism. Additionally, literature on epistemic crisis and post-truth, as well as literature from the field of Science, Technology and Society studies - STS, were mobilized to highlight the existence of a sociotechnical controversy surrounding electronic voting machines, which is politically exploited through conspiratorial discourses and fraudulent narratives by bolsonarism. Finally, Bolsonaro's discourses were analyzed based on Fairclough (2016) to identify discursive strategies surrounding the electronic voting machines and the supposed electoral fraud, namely: constant production of political antagonism and distrust; contradictory narratives and weak cohesion inducing cognitive dissonance; appropriation of technical critiques endorsing printed voting; alignment with an emergent conspiratorial discursive order in contemporary times.