{"id":20493,"date":"2022-10-26T02:45:28","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T02:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/?p=20493"},"modified":"2024-12-11T00:46:02","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T00:46:02","slug":"eleicoes2022-bosonaros-and-lulas-campaigns-targeting-voters-in-brazil-facebook-and-instagram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/2022\/10\/26\/eleicoes2022-bosonaros-and-lulas-campaigns-targeting-voters-in-brazil-facebook-and-instagram\/","title":{"rendered":"#elei\u00e7\u00f5es2022: How Bolsonaro\u2019s and Lula\u2019s Campaigns are Targeting Voters in Brazil on Facebook and Instagram"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Felipe Soares, Philip Mai and Anatoliy Gruzd<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Brazilians are about to decide who is going to be their president for the next four years. The election pits two bitter rivals, the right-wing populist incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and the leftist former president Lula da Silva in a much-watched Brazilian election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some, this year\u2019s Brazilian election is seen as a bellwether for the future of populism politics and a gauge on the health of democracy in the world. With just a few days left until Sunday’s election (October 30, 2022), Brazilian voters are being bombarded online by political<\/a> ads<\/a> and misinformation. Online and on social media, people are seeing posts falsely accusing Lula of planning to shut down churches or that Bolsonaro is a cannibal<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Misinformation in Brazilian elections<\/a> is not new. But since the 2018 elections, politics in Brazil have seen a rise in political polarization and a growing reliance on social media as a source for political news. According to a recent report<\/a>, 78% of Brazilians use social media for politics, which makes political ads on social media important in the electoral dispute. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As part of an international election transparency initiative, the Social Media Lab developed a data visualization tool called PoliDashboard<\/a> which analyzes data (from select countries) about political advertisers and the ads that they are currently running on Meta\u2019s various online services, including Facebook and Instagram. The dashboard uses data from the Facebook Ad Library<\/a>, a searchable database of all political advertisements currently running on Meta\u2019s platforms. Our aim with Polidashboard is to make the political ads data provided by Meta more useful and accessible by providing users with a better sense of who the advertisers are trying to target with each ads and which demographic group advertisers are trying to reach with their overall ads spend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, we are releasing the Brazilian\u2019s version of PoliDashboard<\/a>, which tracks the Most Active Political Advertisers in Brazil, ranked by the total number of ads they are running and broken down by the spending range that they paid for each ad. For privacy and competitive reasons, Meta only releases ads price for each ads within certain predefined ranges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accompanying this release is a brief analysis that we have done to show how journalists, campaign staffers and researchers can use PoliDashboard to examine real political ads spending choices by Bolsonaro\u2019s and Lula\u2019s campaigns on Meta\u2019s platforms in near real time. This analysis covers ads that ran across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger between October 17 to October 23, 2022. During this period, Bolsonaro\u2019s campaign ran 123 ads and Lula\u2019s campaign ran 162 ads (see Table 1 below).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Table 1. Political ads across Meta\u2019s platforms by Bolsonaro and Lula (Oct 17-23, 2022)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/th>R$0 – 99<\/th>R$100 – 499<\/th>R$500- 999<\/th>R$1000 – 4999<\/th>R$5000+<\/th>Total<\/th>Total spent<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Bolsonaro<\/td>17<\/td>12<\/td>13<\/td>44<\/td>37<\/td>123<\/td>R$887.3k – R$1.092M<\/td><\/tr>
Lula<\/td>22<\/td>47<\/td>42<\/td>43<\/td>8<\/td>162<\/td>R$194.9k – R$251.3k<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Although Bolsonaro paid for fewer ads than Lula, Bolsonaro\u2019s campaign spent approximately four times more than Lula\u2019s campaign on Meta\u2019s various platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. This is because Bolsonaro bought more ads in the range of R$5000+, which is the most expensive range for ads with Meta in Brazil. In total, Bolsonaro\u2019s campaign spent between R$887.3k and R$1.092M. Lula\u2019s campaign spent between R$194.9k – R$251.3k. As noted earlier, Facebook reports ad spending as a range with a maximum and minimum. These values are the sum of these maxima and minima for all ads by each advertiser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Method: How to read summary charts<\/h2>
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Figure 1. Sample box plot representation<\/h4>\n\n\n\n