Platformed interaction in the multipolar world Journalism, autocracy, and democracy 69 tactics: “i) the use of spying software; ii) increased restrictions on the use of the internet; iii) the expansion of the collection of citizens’ data and the unification of access to it, and iv) the expansion of criminalization and the police’s investigative powers” (Brito et. al., 2022, p. 61). On the other hand, the analysis deals with the expan- sion of a “strategy based on penal populism and the incitement of moral panic”, whose competencies involve the propagation of an internal enemy, policing and militarization, restriction of citizen- ship, and the selection of a target group for it and, finally, the multiplication of forms of criminalization (Brito et al., 2022, p. 61). The question that arises concerns the role of news ac- tivity in this context. The referred report mentions that there were news references to the use of espionage software in the Bolsonaro administration. There has also been an increase in restrictions on the use of the Internet and legal determinations directed at social platforms, such as the issue of a Provisional Measure that intended to amend the Marco Civil da Internet (Civil Rights Framework for the Internet). The measure has not been implemented, but it has been converted into a bill and is awaiting processing. The debate around the regulation of platforms, currently underway in Brazil, emphasizes the risk of controlling online debate, self-censorship, and the expansion of regulation in areas that are sensitive in terms of deepening democracy or favoring the installation of autocratic mechanisms. The appeals of the so-called Bolsonarism coincided with established practices in news coverage, among which is penal populism, a political practice based on proposing solutions for public safety and criminal policy that are not supported by empirical evidence or expert opinions. Similarly, the appeals to moral panic threaten society and its values, by exposing certain stereotyped individuals or groups. The discursive operation that led Jornal Nacional to focus on narratives of fear and the exacerbation of the population’s sense of insecurity in the fifteen days leading up to the Federal Intervention in Rio de Janeiro in 2018 can be an example of a reaction to the conflict established in news coverage (Schneider, 2023). The implementation of the policy of fear in journalistic
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