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Facebook and Twitter as Mediator in the Brazilian Election on 3rd October 2010


Abstract

On 3rd October 2010, nearly 136 million Brazilians casted their votes in presidential elections. On this day we also chose state governors, senators and deputies. The artist and now elected federal deputy, known as Tiririca, was the number one among all deputies on this date (3rd October). With over 1million and 300 thousand votes, this comedian was a phenomenon at the polls . Ranked first, in number of votes, this comedian not only surpassed the three main candidates for presidency – Dilma Roussef, José Serra and Marina Silva – but also the two ones for governor – Geraldo Alckmin and Aluísio Mercadante . This paper aims to reflect the participation of some users of Facebook and Twitter in the success of Tiririca in the Brazilian elections on October 2010. His fame was built on TV as a comedian who dresses like a clown but had curious success in the 2010 elections as candidate. He is a TV star and got beyond traditional Brazilian politicians (in October 2010). He was elected with the largest figures of votes among the deputies of São Paulo, the most populous and rich state in Brazil. However, some users have seemed not to have accepted his success in the pages of Facebook and Twitter. We are interested in the participation of these social networks as mediator in the process of exposed the young people point of view. There is a trend of standardization in this process and the young people have been demonstrated their points over the Internet to personality. This phenomenon is a kind of a social practice in daily lives of young people. The political point of view has been also formatted as a product and the media culture has been influenced this process. We have chosen the cyberspace of the Facebook and Twitter as privileged locus for our study, since they are dominant forms of territory inhabited by young people. In this text we do not intend to discuss political issues, nor the skills and abilities of candidate to assume this or that political post, or the voters´ choice. We discuss and analyze the success of two social networks as mediators in the process of explanation and construction of point of views of young people.