CAMRI | Contrasting Federal and State Government Communication on Facebook in Brazil: Contradictory Messages and Realities

Contrasting Federal and State Government Communication on Facebook in Brazil: Contradictory Messages and Realities

A Book Chapter by Andrea Medrado and Adilson Vaz Cabral Filho, published by Springer

This chapter was published in Manufacturing Government Communication on Covid-19: A Comparative Perspective.

Drs. Medrado and Cabral employ content analysis and observation to investigate the dominant themes on the Facebook pages of Brazil’s Federal Government and of São Paulo State. They compare how economic and health issues relating to the pandemic are addressed in these two—Federal and State—levels of government. The chapter refers to notions of “uncivil society” and “necropolitics,” analyzing how these emerge in a context of accelerated neoliberal reforms. The findings demonstrate that the Federal Government focused on economic measures while there was little coverage of health issues, such as prevention, guidance, and vaccines. In contrast, the State of São Paulo had a predominance of posts about vaccination. Both campaigns were perceived as permanent campaigning strategies rather than as catering for citizens’ needs.

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Photo by Timothy Hales Bennett on Unsplash

About Andrea Medrado

Andrea Medrado is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Media and Communication of the University of Westminster. She is also the Course Leader for the BA Digital Media and the leader for the Cultural Identities and Social Change theme at the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI). Her research focuses on digital media activism and artivism as tools for social change in the Global South and on creative and participatory approaches to analysing marginalised communities’ information security needs and everyday engagements with artificial intelligence (AI). Her book Media Activism, Artivism and the Fight Against Marginalisation in the Global South was published by Routledge in 2023. She has also published in leading academic journals and contributed to several edited book collections. Andrea is currently the Vice President of IAMCR, the largest international association in the field of media and communication.