The University of Washington Center for an Informed Public‘s Invited Speaker Series will continue on March 9 with David Nemer, an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, who will discuss his research into how WhatsApp became a potent tool for the spread of misinformation during the 2018 Brazilian general election, especially for supporters of Jair Bolsonaro.
Nemer began monitoring pro-Bolsonaro WhatsApp groups in March 2018, at the outset of the election, and found that the social media app eventually helped Bolsonaro win and that fake news spread in typical fashion, through a structure of groups that resembled a pyramid. Now, two years into Bolsonaro’s presidency, WhatsApp is still serving as a largely hidden platform for the radicalization of right-wing Brazilians, even as Bolsonaro’s once-united base has splintered into separate, and often competing, factions.
In this talk, “From Misinformation to Extremism: How WhatsApp Is Affording Radicalization in Brazil,” Nemer will discuss the hidden spaces of populism and misinformation on WhatsApp and detail the human infrastructure that is radicalizing the right in Brazil.
This virtual event, hosted via Zoom on Tuesday, March 9 at 9:30 a.m. PST, is free and open to the public for those who register. A link will be sent out to registrants approximately 90 minutes before the start of the event. | REGISTER HERE
About the Speaker:
David Nemer is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and author of the forthcoming book, Technology of the Oppressed (MIT Press) and Favela Digital: The other side of technology (GSA, 2013). Nemer is an affiliated scholar in the Brazil Lab at Princeton University, holds an MA in Anthropology from University of Virginia, a MS in computer science from Universität des Saarlandes, and a PhD in computing, culture, and society from Indiana University. Nemer has written for The Guardian, El País, HuffPost, Salon and The Intercept.
