Racializing Region: Internal Orientalism, Social Media, and the Perpetuation of Stereotypes and Prejudice against Brazilian Nordestinos

• Author: Rodrigo Serrão
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20943157
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20943157

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 246, Vol. 49 No. 5, September 2022, 181–199

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20943157

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

181

Racializing Region

Internal Orientalism, Social Media, and the Perpetuation of

Stereotypes and Prejudice against Brazilian Nordestinos

by

Rodrigo Serrão

Consideration of the prevalence of regional prejudice in Brazil shows how stereotypical

assumptions about culture, race, and socioeconomic class inform regional biases. A com-

parison of discriminatory social media posts after the 2014 and 2018 presidential elections

reveals similarities in most of the racist and xenophobic language in the two election cycles

but an increase in references to Venezuela and Cuba and heightened animosity toward the

Partido dos Trabalhadores in 2018. Racism directed by social media users against nordes-

tinos is part of a historical continuum of oppression fostered by regional stereotypes and

failed public policies that have real-life implications for Brazil’s nordestinos.

A consideração da prevalência de preconceito regional no Brasil mostra a centralidade

de premissas estereotipadas sobre cultura, raça e classe socioeconômica. Uma comparação

de publicações discriminatórias nas mídias sociais após as eleições presidenciais de 2014 e

2018 revela semelhanças na maior parte da linguagem racista e xenofóbica nos dois ciclos

eleitorais, mas um aumento nas referências à Venezuela e Cuba e maior animosidade em

relação ao Partido dos Trabalhadores em 2018. Racismo dirigido por usuários de mídia

social contra os nordestinos faz parte de um continuum histórico de opressão promovida

por estereótipos regionais e políticas públicas fracassadas que têm implicações na vida real

para os nordestinos do Brasil.

Keywords: Social media, Racism, Bolsonaro, Partido dos Trabalhadores, Northeast,

Nordestinos

The Internet and social media in particular are essential tools of political

campaigns and activism in many countries (Dimitrova and Matthes, 2018). In

the past few years, scholars have documented the influence of social media on

the political processes of countries such as the United States (Hale and Grabe,

2018), Australia (Bruns and Moon, 2018), and Hong Kong (Chan, 2018). In addi-

tion to their usefulness for engaging with and recruiting new voters, scholars

have noticed their polarizing and tribalistic effects. For instance, Lim (2017),

examining the case of the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election in Indonesia,

Rodrigo Serrão is an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social

Work at Hope College. His research is located at the intersection of race and ethnicity, religion,

and immigration. He thanks the three reviewers, Sarah Sarzynski, Paulo Simões, and Mônica Dias

Martins, for their careful reading and comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. He is also

grateful for the valuable observations provided by Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman and Hadi

Khoshneviss, which greatly enhanced the overall quality of this paper.

943157LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20943157LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESSerrão / RACIALIZING REGION IN BRAZIL

research-article2020

182 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

argues that the social media encourage “freedom to hate” by allowing users to

silence other voices while practicing their supposed freedom of expression.

Moderate or alternative voices get lost in polarized and aggressive politics

exacerbated by what Lim calls the “algorithm enclave,” which emerges when

“individuals, facilitated by their constant interactions with algorithms, attempt

to create a (perceived) shared identity online for defending their beliefs and

protecting their resources from both real and perceived threats” (422).

Social media play an essential role in Brazilian politics (Cervi, Massuchin,

and Carvalho, 2016). According to a report by Datafolha (2018), in the 2018

Brazilian presidential election 65 percent of the electorate used the Facebook-

owned mobile app WhatsApp, which is reported to have surpassed Facebook

as the most popular such site in Brazil. WhatsApp is also the preferred such

vehicle for the spread of misinformation because of its lack of fact-checkers, a

tool that Facebook and Google have attempted to implement in their platforms

(Tardáguila, Benevenuto, and Ortellado, 2018). The capacity to spread misinfor-

mation via social media was channeled particularly well by the candidate Jair

Bolsonaro and his team, who used them to disseminate false news, rumors, and

insults to millions of his followers (Pinheiro-Machado and Scalco, 2018).

According to an analysis conducted by the website Monitor do Debate Político

no Meio Digital, Bolsonaro’s social media content focused on three main tar-

gets—left-wing politics (or the promotion of anti–Partido dos Trabalhadores

[Workers’ Party—PT] sentiment), feminism, and the Globo network. These

themes resonated among the population because most of the “fake news”

spread during this period related to fraud at the polls, the so-called gay kit, and

the PT candidate Fernando Haddad’s 1998 Em defesa do socalismo (Getúlio

Vargas Foundation, 2018), the two latter directly linked to left-wing politics,

feminism, and the PT.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories, however, were not the only news-

making online manifestations. As the results of the first-round runoff emerged,

millions of posts insulting and threatening nordestinos (Northeastern Brazilians)

appeared. As in 2010 and 2014, when Brazil elected and reelected its first female

president, large numbers of online interactions involved attacks on minority

groups and nordestinos. Online criticism concerning the Northeast’s drought,

poverty, government assistance, and internal migration to the South(east) has

often been used to dehumanize and “otherize” this population. In 2010 and

2014, nordestinos were targeted for having helped to keep the PT in power by

electing and reelecting Dilma Rousseff. In 2018, rage against nordestinos

reemerged because their votes prevented a Bolsonaro first-round victory. Social

media became a window into the regional, racial, cultural, and classist preju-

dice that challenged the commonsense rhetoric of cordial national relations.

This study draws from the extensive literature on the historical circum-

stances that have long defined the Northeast and its people as the backward

Other and the persistence of these perceptions in present-day Brazil. I begin by

demonstrating the complex and intertwined processes of nation building,

racial formation, and regional prejudice that have characterized Brazil since the

end of the nineteenth century. Against this background, I then examine racist

social media posts after the 2014 and 2018 presidential election results that not

only reveal a recurrent and global use of social media for “objectionable