Totally agreed

🤣🤣🤣

My personal thanks to
@anid-chile.bsky.social and Nucleo MEPOP who support this research and my colleagues who believed this insight all the way through.

"The long-term effects of latent bombs of disinformation are evident, as seen in the Capitol
riots in the US and their recurrence in Brazil. Persistent disinformation campaigns, like those in Brazil, may fuel widespread distrust in electoral processes and democratic institutions"

Amongst other analyzed data, we found clear patterns of coordinated activity to publicize the false electoral fraud narratives in Brazil, not so much in Chile. Both meso and macro factores could explain the different outcomes.

We compare two electoral fraud conspiracy narratives in presidential elections in Brazil (2022) and Chile (2021). Building on media content and Telegram fringe groups from the losing parties, we apply the framework to detect combinations of factors that trigger the "latent bomb"

We operationalize in three levels: macro, meso and micro, understanding disinformation (in particular, medium- to long-term) as a multilevel and complex phenomenon that stems from individual to social to structural conditions

In the article we conceptualize, operationalize and empirically test the "Latent Bombs of Disinformation": a long-term antidemocratic political strategy
involving the persistent dissemination of misleading information, designed to be activated under specific conditions.

Join this conversation by reading and sharing your own thoughts with us. Hopefully this sort of positivity spreads through our so questioned democratic systems and institutions (many times in an unjustified manner).

A personal note: as a polcomm researcher dealing with a lot of antidemocratic practices lately, it was quite a gulf of pure democratic air to be nurtured by the YouTube Caucus’ enthusiastic, inclusive, dialogic and participatory environment. We all have something to learn from that.

We feel privileged and thankful to the “Bandada”, sharing their experience was heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time, since the constitutional proposition was rejected in a national referendum in September 2022. An intense and constructive shared experience.

A couple of images display the customization, moderation through roles and the organization of content in Discord channels to enable users to successfully follow such a complex process as a constitutional debate and the voting procedures that emanated daily.

The results are quite an interesting display of the appropriation of a commercial platform, subverting it, instrumentalizing it to afford their political needs. In that line, we identified four main affordances: Coordination, Cooperativism, Moderation, Customization.

The group opened a Discord server, an interesting selection of platform to fulfill their needs. Our study is based on a 2 month Netnography w/ a participatory component, complemented with interviews and a focus group, where we were welcomed into their world, a beautiful and inclusive environment.

They first met as frequent users of YouTube chat of the deliberative sessions of the constitutional process, and they began to relate and recognize each other, communicate and bond. The chat, though, disappeared when there was no voting, so they decided to "migrate" - hence the title ;-).

Among those, we came across a heavily motivated group of regular citizens, not very excited about institutional politics, but that felt the process was being led by new voices, of “people like them”.

This is a story worthy of telling, beyond the academic dimension. During Chile's recent constitutional process (2021-2), there was plenty of hope in marginalized sectors. New energy was put into the political arena, especially by some not-really-political actors.