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In January 2019, when Jair Bolsonaro was inaugurated as the president of Brazil, journalists were denied access to parts of the event. By his side, instead, were people like Allan dos Santos, a popular blogger who pushed lies about the media, democracy, COVID-19, and Brazilian politics. Dos Santos, and bloggers like him, Paula Ramón writes, “marked the rise of a government that despised the traditional media and used fake news as a communication tool. He helped start a new chapter in the war of narratives that would challenge the country’s institutions, going on to become a key figure in the domination of fake news in Brazil.”
Bolsonaro recognized the value of a digital campaign. He also realized that consequences for outright lies were slim. “The result was that throughout the 2018 presidential campaign, Brazilians were drowned in what” Patricia Campos Mello, a prominent journalist in Brazil, called a “sea of lies.” In recent years, Brazil’s Supreme Court has attempted to crack down on fake news—it shuttered Telegram, the increasingly popular messaging app, for two days. Many of dos Santos’s channels have been shut down. He fled Brazil for Florida. But another election is around the corner. And “in the fight for attention,” Ramón writes, “fake news has the upper hand.” —Savannah Jacobson, story editor
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