Discourse and Disinformation on COVID-19 Vaccination in Spain and Brazil

Abstract

This chapter addresses the creation of political conflict on Twitter in a comparative study between Brazil and Spain. Based on an analysis of the political debate on dealing with two countries' health crises, it analyses the most retweeted messages published during the first week of vaccination in Europe and the Americas. Firstly, it analysed the general characteristics of the online debate on the immunisation of COVID-19. Secondly, it carried out an analysis of information disorder in each country. Although governmental positions in both countries are opposed, the results allow establishing common patterns of polarized profiles in both countries that question the management of the pandemic. It can be seen how political polarization is shaped as a characteristic of disinformation in both countries. That reveals that, after the health crisis, there is a crisis of democratic institutions that impact public health actions, but specifically to combat COVID-19.

Automatic Twitter Stance Detection on Politically Controversial Issues: A Study on Covid-19’s CPI

“…A escolha de analisar apenas dados de usuários prolíficos e engajados revelou que embora eles correspondam a uma relativa minoria, ainda assim são capazes de movimentar ativamente as discussões ao serem responsáveis por cerca de 40% a 50% do volume de retweets que mais reverberaram entre os usuários processados (ou 43% da totalidade de retweets coletados). A rotulac ¸ão de usuários com base em seu posicionamento frente a um assunto pode contribuir com o avanc ¸o de estudos de fenômenos em redes sociais de internet, em particular aqueles relacionados à disseminac ¸ão de desinformac ¸ão [Penteado et al 2021].…”