Representing “The People”: What Can Social Media Images Reveal About Populist Propaganda in Brazil?

Abstract

This study explores the visual content posted by far-right populist parliamentarians in Brazil, asking how “the people” are represented through imagery. Scholars have previously argued that populists have failed to foster the voice of “the people” in Latin America, but have they also failed to signify and cultivate an authentic visual representation of them? To answer this question, we collected the social media imagery posted by federal deputies of the 56th Legislature, a period characterized as one of illiberal backlash in Brazil. We employed visual analytics as a method of data analysis, demonstrating that clustering images according to their color similarities facilitates the study of key themes of populist communication, namely: the leader’s bodily performance, nationalism, the “enemy,” and “the people.” Besides this methodological contribution, our findings suggest that parliamentarians played a crucial role in enabling and sustaining far-right populist discourses. These politicians defined “the people” solely through the battles set in motion at the level of political affiliations. The voices of those claimed to be represented by them were diluted in visuals of mass demonstrations, which provided the primary occasion for their incorporation into populist communication.