From November 2-3, FGV’s Department of Public Policy Analysis (DAPP) participated in the international forum ‘Policy Research vs. Alternative Facts: Will Think Tanks Become the Casualties in the Guerrilla War of Ideas?’ held by University of Pennsylvania in partnership with Fundação Getulio Vargas. The event, held in Washington, brought together 45 think tanks to discuss the role of these institutions in promoting qualified public debate regarding politics across various levels of government, considering the onset of fake news and disinformation campaigns.

DAPP was represented in the Alt-Facts Forum by Director Marco Aurelio Rudieger, who presented the unit’s recent work on the use of automated accounts in key moments of Brazilian politics. The study ‘Bots, social networks, and politics in Brazil: illegitimate interference with public debate on the web, risks to democracy, and the 2018 elections’ points out that in the general strike of April 2017, for instance, more than 20% of the interactions that took place on Twitter between users in favor of the strike were caused by this type of account. During the 2014 presidential elections, bots also were responsible for more than 10% of the discussions.

“The way social networks are being used and manipulated to steer the agendas and interests of particular groups is central in Brazilian and international politics. This issue is being discussed by all the top think tanks, as seen in the Washington forum. This phenomenon will intensify during the 2018 elections, especially because there are now public funds involved in the use of social networks. Our work seeks to investigate and propose solutions to maintain the networks as an open channel for everyone, while preventing distortions that threaten democracy,” he said.

The study ‘Bots, social networks, and politics in Brazil’ is available on this website.