O discurso político mediado por computadores: uma análise das estratégias discursivas dos candidatos à presidência brasileira no segundo turno das eleições de 2018

Abstract

The present thesis starts from the recognition that every discourse is crossed by specific conditions that shape and, at the same time, move the knowledge necessary for the production of meaning in the discourses. This notion is especially relevant when we think of political discourses, which permeate society at different times and in different contexts. At the same time, we consider that the constant process of technological evolution of the means of communication and interaction has directly impacted the production, reproduction and construction of meanings about the discourses produced by the subjects that constitute the political sphere. In this sense, with this thesis, we seek to discuss the strategies of candidates for the presidency of Brazil in 2018 used for the production of their speeches in the context of social networks on the Internet, specifically the Facebook platform. From these strategies, we also discussed their effects observed from the analysis of the interactions of the candidates' supporters on the platform. The theoretical discussion that supports these analyzes included the debate on topics such as Politics; Political speech; Political Discourse Strategies; Computer Mediated Communication; and Social Networks on the Internet. In addition, we adopted as a methodological approach the Computer Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA), by researcher Susan Herring, which structures the analysis of discourses from the levels of the Structure; Sense; Social Interaction and Behavior. For the construction of the corpus, we considered all publications on the pages of candidates Fernando Haddad (PT) and Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) taken during the second round of the 2018 election campaign, as well as the interactions of these publications (likes, comments, shares and views). As a result, we observed that the candidates not only appropriated the strategies of the political discourse, but also reframed and adapted them to the context of the CMC, so that both made use of the national conjuncture that is aggravated by the elections to enhance their campaign strategies through social media platforms, expanding the engagement capacity and visibility of applications. Still, the interactions of the subjects with the candidates' publications demonstrate very defined group behaviors and directly related to the strategies used in each campaign. We also highlight the potential for automating subjects' speeches in response to strategies that remove the discussion of topics effectively related to the political sphere from the center of the political debate.