Anatomy of polarization and communicational barbarism 83 According to Izzo (2009), themediasphere encompasses media manipulation, forms of language, and the meanings of new technological supports. Rocha (2023) articulates this concept to the recent Brazilian experience and proposes an understanding of the extremist mediasphere based on four internal levels and an external one. The internal levels would be the information chan- nels through which Bolsonaro-related information flows: WhatsApp and its circuits5 (groups, transmission lists, etc.), the inte- grated circuit of YouTube channels, social media, and proprietary apps (Mano and TV Bolsonaro on Facebook). The fifth level, external to the Bolsonarist bubbles, would be the traditional media echoing, promoting, and giving recognition to opinions originat- ing from these bubbles, with particular emphasis on the Jovem Pan broadcaster in Brazil and Fox News in the USA (Rocha, 2023). The effect of the “friendly media” on the “cult-like” mentality of fanaticized activism is devastating since, by giving voice to supporters of conspiracy theories and giving visibility to the most delusional news, the belief of the members of the ex- tremist mediasphere becomes unshakable. In both countries, the procedure is similar: segments from Jovem Pan and Fox News materials are rapidly dis- tributed in the four internal elements of the disin- formation ecosystem (Rocha, 2023, p. 31). In this regard, we highlight the numerous false state- ments made by Bolsonaro himself during the COVID-19 pan- demic, as well as the articles dealing with factoids and misinformative content. In the Brazilian pandemic context, the infodemic situation was aggravated by the dissemination of false informa- tion by the presidency, among them the numerous statements in defense of hydroxychloroquine, a drug with unproven efficacy in combating COVID-19 (Mello dos Santos and Dalmolin, 2023). This mediasphere operates through a complex system of discursive exchanges (Fernández, 2021), facilitated by vari- 5 Here we can include not only WhatsApp but also other platforms, like Telegram and Signal, situated in the context of the so-called “life technologies”, those that merge aspects form the public and service political life in a multimodal commu- nication with a semiprivate character (Cruz & Harindaranat, 2020).
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