HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFORDS POPULIST POLITICS: REMARKS ON LIMINALITY BASED ON THE BRAZILIAN CASE

Leticia Cesarino

doi:10.1590/01031813686191620200410

Leticia Cesarino

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/01031813686191620200410

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Abstract

ABSTRACT In the past decade or so, populism and social media have been outstanding issues both in academia and the public sphere. At this point, evidence from multiple countries suggest that perceived parallels between the dynamics of social media and the mechanics of populist discourse may be more than just incidental, relating to a shared structural field. This article suggests one possible path towards making sense of how the dynamics of social media and the mechanics of populist mobilization have co-produced each other in the last decade or so. Navigating the interface between anthropology and linguistics, it takes key aspects of Victor Turner’s notion of liminality to suggest some of the ways in which social media’s anti-structural affordances may help lay a foundation for the contemporary flourishing of populist discourse: markers of social structure are suspended; communitas is formed; the culture core is addressed; mimesis and anti-structural inversions are performed; subjects become influenceable. I elaborate on this claim based on Brazilian materials, drawn from online ethnography on pro-Bolsonaro WhatsApp groups and other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook since 2018.

Highlights

In the past decade or so, populism and social media have been outstanding issues both in academia and the public sphere
In the past few years, growing concerns about how social media has helped sustain the rise of populist politics around the world have been aired both in academia and in the public sphere
Scholarly evidence from multiple countries suggests that perceived parallels between the dynamics of social media and the mechanics of populist discourse may be more than just incidental (SINHA,2017; MALY, 2018, 2019; MAZZARELLA, 2019; MIROWSKI, 2019; SILVA, 2019; PROCHÁZKA; BLOMMAERT, 2019)

Summary

CRISIS AND LIMINALITY

British anthropologist Victor Turner originally developed his theory of liminality as part of a structural-functionalist explanation for the performative efficacy of tribal rituals. I have suggested (CESARINO, 2020b) that this may have been in part reinforced by social media itself, saturated with punitivist and moralizing content about the social fabric being disrupted by particular groups (urban criminals, Workers Party’s corrupt politicians, identity politics) portrayed as inherently bad In this sense, Bolsonaro’s rise fed on what Jean and John Comaroff (2004) called a “metaphysics of production and reduction of disorder”: social media spread a sense of epistemic and moral crisis and disorganization, while at the same time offering a reductionist, populist-style solution for remaking a corrupt society anew by the hands of an all-powerful, untainted anti-establishment outsider. As Antonio Gramsci famously put it, a great variety of morbid symptoms may appear

Markers of social structure are suspended

Communitas is formed

The culture core is addressed

Mimesis and anti-structural inversions are performed

Subjects become influenceable

CONCLUSION