6. BRAZIL 6.1 THE DISINFORMATION SCENARIO IN THE COUNTRY Brazil follows the Latin American trend of highly concentrated media markets. The country has a system based on large national groups, especially TV and radio networks, associated with regional oligopolistic groups, in both cases with crosscontrol of radio and TV stations, print media, and websites. The largest group in the country is Globo (TV, radio, cable TV, printed media, internet), with other big players being Record (TV, cable TV, and internet), Folha (print, internet), and Band (TV, cable TV, print). In addition, the country has strong religious networks, especially Catholic and NeoPentecostal. The country has experienced disinformation episodes throughout its history, linked to both private and public media.26 In recent years, however, the phenomenon has grown due to the circulation of misleading content on digital platforms. A landmark episode in this regard was the 2018 elections. A commission of external observers classified disinformation during the 2018 general elections as “unprecedented” (Galhardo 2018). Days before the first round, the fact-checking agency Agência Lupa labelled as untrue twelve pieces of information that, combined, had been shared more than 1.17 million times on Facebook. In the second round, the agency Aos Fatos denied fourteen false items that had been shared 1.12 million times on Facebook (Aos Fatos et al. 2018). In 2018, an article in Folha de S. Paulo (Mello 2018) denounced an illegal financing scheme worth 10 million reais for the extensive distribution of disinformation with electoral content. These services, offered by digital marketing companies, would have been illegally procured by the private sector in favor of the then candidate Jair Bolsonaro. Based on the complaint, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) opened an investigation into an alleged bulk messaging scheme associated with Bolsonaro. A survey conducted by the IDEA Big Data Institute after the 2018 elections found that 90 percent of voters who voted for Bolsonaro believe in fake news (Pasqualini 2018). According to research conducted by Avaaz in 2020, seven out of ten Brazilians believe in fake news (Congresso em Foco 2020). The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated this scenario, combining denialist narratives with political disinformation, since a significant portion of the false information about Covid-19 came from I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH President Bolsonaro or ministers or politicians close to him, such as his sons. Bolsonaro questioned the need for social distancing and the use of masks, promoted drugs with no proven effectiveness for Covid-19 (such as chloroquine and ivermectin), and attacked the Brazilian states that sought to implement the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO). A study by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), published in April 2020, concluded that 73.7 percent of the fake news about the pandemic circulated on WhatsApp, 10.5 percent on Instagram, and 15.8 percent on Facebook. The survey was based on an analysis of reports and fake news received by the application Eu Fiscalizo between March 17 and April 10, 2020 (Fiocruz 2020). Another topic that was the subject of an intense disinformation campaign, led once again by President Bolsonaro, was the electoral system. The president and his supporters began to claim that there had been fraud in the 2018 elections and launched a campaign against the country’s current system, based on electronic ballot boxes, advocating in favor of printed ballots and verification of vouchers. A study by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) revealed that the phenomenon of disinformation has persisted, with an increase in election years (Ruediger et al. 2020). Paulo José Lara (interview, August 2021) from Article 19, a digital rights coordinator in Brazil, stated that “disinformation about the electoral process has increased greatly in Brazil—the distrust in institutions. If there is a coordinated attack on the electoral courts—politics as it is traditionally done—all this contributes a lot to the degradation of the democratic process.” 6.2 ACTORS AND STRATEGIES TO COMBAT DISINFORMATION CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS Brazil has a vibrant landscape of civil society organizations that work with the issue of disinformation. A large number of the entities that work with digital rights are organized around the Coalizão Direitos na Rede (CDR, Rights Online Coalition), a network that brings together more than forty organizations, established in the context of the struggle for the approval of “Marco Civil da Latin America and the Caribbean – 9 6