In the week leading up to the vote in the Brazilian Congress on whether to open an impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff on Sunday, three out of the five top stories shared on Facebook were false, exposing some 200,000 people to anti-government misinformation, BBC Brazil reported.
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According to a study by Brazil’s Research Group on Public Access to Information Policy accessed by BBC Brazil, the third, fourth, and fifth most-shared news stories between Tuesday and Saturday were actually rumors and not true news.
The top story of the three misinformation reports was headlined “Federal police want to know the motives for Dilma donating 30 billion reales to Friboi,” referring to the Brazilian meat-packaging giant. The piece, published on Pensa Brasil, was shared over 90,000 times on Facebook.
The second untrue story, headlined “Businessman orders pro-Dilma militancy to go armed on Sunday: ‘Shoot to kill,’” published on Diario do Brasil based on fabricated quotes, received over 65,000 shares on Facebook.
The third false story, and fifth top on Facebook during the week overall, was also published on Diario do Brasil based on a rumor about a warrant for the arrest of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva linked to the corruption scandal known as Operation Car Wash. The article, titled “Lula leaves Brasilia in a hurry learning of new phase of Car Wash, could it be an arrest warrant?” was shared on Facebook over 58,000 times.
The study comes as the latest example of Brazilian media distorting information and intervening in political processes to whip up support to have Rousseff removed from power.
Brazilian media outlets such as Globo, owned by and aligned with the country’s dictatorship-linked economic elite, have been criticized for “coup-mongering” and manipulating the country’s massive corruption scandals to sway public opinion in favor of the impeachment attempt in Congress.
Political opponents have latched on widespread fraud to try to remove Rousseff from power in the name of rooting out corruption. But Rousseff is not accused of financial impropriety or personal enrichment, while lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha, leaking the impeachment attempt, is embroiled in a multi-million dollar bribery scandal.
A recent poll by Datafolha found that 61 percent of Brazilians want Rousseff to be impeached, down from 68 percent in March, and that 77 percent support impeachment of Cunha.
As the lower house votes on Sunday on whether to move the impeachment process forward, 318 out of the 594 members of Congress face charges or are under investigation for corruption.