Facebook and political corruption in Brazil: uses and misuses of moral panic theory in the context of digital media

Abstract

This master's research aims to analyse if representations of Brazilian political corruption on Facebook have been perceived by the media and by the audience as concerning enough to trigger a mass panic, particularly after the launching of Operation Carwash, in 2014. This study is an innovative investigation using both a narrative analysis and a Social Media Sentiment Analysis (SMSA) to examine primary data collected on Facebook: 100 posts and over 60,000 comments from two sources across three timeframes. The research offers a thorough investigation about how the media have framed the issue of corruption in Brazil, and how citizens have reacted when exposed to such regime of truth in the context of ‘Media 2.0’. It argues that corruption has indeed been perceived as a potential moral panic since key elements from the literature can be identified, but the very nature of corruption as white-collar crime leads to the adaptation of some elements and characters in the narrative. The results of the investigation indicate that both the narrative and key elements of mass panics are present in the case analysed, although further studies are needed in order to confirm it as a concrete case of moral panic.