Political discussions migrated from social media to messaging apps

Brazil is the fifth country in the world in terms of total social media users and third in total hours connected per person. Daily, 159 million personal profiles access social network platforms for an average of 3.42 hours. It is expected that in just five years, almost 90 percent of the Brazilian population will be on social media, per Statista. 

The power of social networks became especially clear in the 2018 elections, as Jair Bolsonaro — a backbencher with negligible television and radio airtime for political ads — leapfrogged the opposition to win the presidential race. 

A study published on Monday suggested that social media users who consumed political news on WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube were twice as likely to vote for the far-right politician in 2018. That was the case, the researchers argue, because Mr. Bolsonaro was years ahead of other politicians in crafting his social media persona. 

“When you have a candidate who dominates these communicational tools in such a substantial way, he can obtain hegemony over communication on new media, making his message resonate much more than those of other candidates,” Pedro Mundim, one of the study’s authors, said in a recent interview.

During the last presidential election, Mr. Bolsonaro mustered 48 million likes, shares, and comments on posts mentioning him. It...