From Fake News to Real Protests: WhatsApp’s Role in Brazilian Political Coordination

Abstract

The growth of social networks has raised concerns about the misuse of these platforms by disinformation campaigns, social bots, and coordinated activities. Among these platforms, WhatsApp has become a focal point for this abuse, particularly in Brazil, one of the countries with the highest use of the platform. Despite acknowledging the presence of coordinated campaigns and implementing restrictions on the number of messages forwarded per user, the platform continues to be abused. Due to its private nature and the difficulty of collecting information, little is known about these campaigns and the messages they disseminate. Given this context, our study investigates the presence of coordinated activities on WhatsApp in Brazil, identifying their content and purpose, especially how these messages relate to recent Brazilian political events. To answer these questions, we analyzed 13 million messages from 1,444 political groups over seven months from July 2022 to January 2023. Using network analysis, our findings suggest a significant prevalence of coordinated activity in the propagation of news messages, 26% of which originate from misinformation sites. Furthermore, we found that images play a key role in coordinated activity, accounting for 15% of messages, which are also used to mislead. Finally, coordinated accounts were used to organize collective actions, including attacks and protests against election results.