How the new information ecosystem is changing the political environment
The next Brazilian government will face an unprecedented challenge in national politics because its success will depend more on the way in which it will communicate with the population than on the execution of projects and works. It seems absurd, an incongruity, but it is a new reality that reflects the ongoing changes in the way in which information and communication have become predominant in Brazilian and also in many other countries around the globe.
The main change is that the heads of national, state and municipal executive powers will have to communicate more with the population than sign papers and negotiate with politicians and businessmen. Communication is becoming the most critical asset in the worldwide political arena. In the digital era, the political sustainability of a government has come to depend, fundamentally, on how a president is perceived by millions of people who frequent social networks.
Political perception is part of what communication specialists call an information ecosystem, that is, the set of social, economic, political, cultural, and technological factors that condition how people develop their knowledge of the world in which they live. Until now, perceptions involved two types of knowledge about facts, data, and events reported by the press: knowledge of something and knowledge about something. In the first case, we have the pure record of a novelty, for example, when we read a newspaper headline. We know what happened, but we ignore the why, how, background, and consequences of news.
Public opinion in the digital age is no longer shaped by logic, causality, and reflection. The volume, diversity, and speed with which information is thrown into the social environment prevent people from reasoning as before. We are in the era of informational impact, where perceptions are formed from the accumulation of news, data, facts, and events, that is, through information bombing on social networks and conventional vehicles such as news channels on closed TV networks.
The impact information strategy is responsible for the fact that so many people end up ignoring logic and so-called common sense. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro used this technique in his weekly internet lives to create distorted perceptions, whose content was later reinforced by the mass reproduction of the same message. This operation was coordinated by the so-called “hate cabinet”, controlled by one of the president’s sons.
A mandatory tool
The use, during the last electoral campaign, of the technique of accumulating impactful posts through social networks even managed to compensate for the resistance of the great national press to President Bolsonaro’s reelection campaign. In the past, the support of major newspapers and television networks was a decisive element for the electoral viability of candidates and for the political sustainability of presidents, governors and mayors. Now, the mainstream press devotes a large part of its news agenda to impacting posts, most of them fake news, produced on social networks. Communication with the mass of users of social networks has become a mandatory tool for those in power or aspiring to it.
The new Brazilian president-elect will have to change his traditional way of approaching his on the street followers to prioritize the online communication strategy as a normal procedure, to seek support for his projects, especially in the first phase of his government. He will inherit a tragic financial and administrative legacy left by his predecessor. Lula will not have enough money to fulfill several electoral promises and will need to convince his supporters to be patient until the most serious problems are resolved.
The support of public opinion is the only option available to the new head of government, since he does not have an effective majority in the national congress, has only temporary sympathy from the great press, faces resistance from the Armed Forces and the private business sector. This political conjuncture and the new conditions created by the impact of information on the formation of national public opinion increased the importance that communication strategies now have in government priorities.
