Several incidents manifest the coordinated activities of pro-Bolsonaro accounts. Online defamation campaigns besieged journalist Patrícia Campos Mello, after she published details on how private companies were providing illegal services to the political campaigns in 2018 (Nemer, 2020). Another journalist, Glenn Greenwald, was similarly targeted after publishing a story about the links of members of the government to corruption and conspiratorial behaviour by the prosecutors and judges behind Lula’s prosecution (DFRLab, 2019). Most recently, such attacks have been made against Luiz Henrique Mandetta, former Minister of Health who was fired on 16 April 2020 (DFRLab, 2020). Many others have been targeted in similar ways. These campaigns are boosted by amplification techniques (DFRLab, 2019) and false information (DFRLab, 2020), and they make use of automated accounts (DFRLab, 2019) and multiple forms of media, such as hyper-partisan websites, Facebook groups, Twitter accounts, and WhatsApp groups (DFRLab, 2020). In general, they are also promoted by members of the government, including Jair Bolsonaro himself. During the first year of Bolsonaro’s government, violence against the press increase by 54% (Santana, 2020). According to Reporters Without Borders (2020), since 2020, there is a more performative strategy of attacks designed to discredit journalists and the media, with the president encouraging supporters to attack them publicly. Between January and March 2020, Jair Bolsonaro attacked at least thirty-two journalists, while his son Eduardo has made at least thirty such attacks in March alone. Female journalists receive the most attacks. In fact, out of the twenty gendered attacks in January and February, sixteen were made by state officials. Moreover, judicial harassment and calls for boycotts, such as calls for advertisers to prioritize pro-government media- are becoming more common (Reporters Without Borders, 2020). Most recently, Bolsonaro has been criticized for putting the population at risk by generating and spreading disinformation on the Coronavirus. For instance, he “distorted a speech by a WHO director”, proclaimed that people should use the unproven anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, and attacked scientists (João Filho, 2020). As a result, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram deleted some of his content online, such as videos of his tour in a commercial area with no respect for social distancing, and the promotion of hydroxychloroquine, one of the first major world leaders to be corrected in such a way (Reporters Without Borders, 2020). Within the first months of the coronavirus spreading, both he and government members disseminated “over one hundred examples of false information” (Ricard & Medeiros, 2020). Additionally, the network of Instagram and Facebook accounts, groups, and pages taken down by Facebook on July 2020 and linked to the Social Liberal Party not only posted about the pandemic but also published hate speech content and criticisms of the opposition, including journalists (Gleicher, 2020). Table 2: Observed Strategies, Tools and Techniques of Social Media Manipulation in Brazil Content and Communication Platforms Account Types Messaging and Valence Strategies Bots and Human Pro-government, pro-party, Disinformation, Data-driven WhatsApp, Real and Fake Attacks on opposition, strategies, Trolls, Facebook, Twitter, Distracting messages, Driving Amplifying content Instagram polarization, Suppressing speech Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. 62