Brazil’s 2018 presidential election would be the first in which social media would have more influence than traditional media, due both to the exponential growth of users and the ban against corporate donation to campaigns, which sharply reduced the funds available to them.

According to a study by FGV/DAPP, about 20% of all political discussions on social networks in Brazil are instigated by bots.

These malicious political bots impersonate real users in order to create artificial engagement, commonly supported by fake news.

So, our main goals with this campaign were to create awareness about this manipulation, to set Congresso em Foco as a relevant source of political news and, obviously, to increase its website’s audience.

Brazil’s 2018 presidential election would be the first in which social media would have more influence than traditional media, due both to the exponential growth of users and the ban against corporate donation to campaigns, which sharply reduced the funds available to them.

According to a study by FGV/DAPP, about 20% of all political discussions on social networks in Brazil are instigated by bots.

These malicious political bots impersonate real users in order to create artificial engagement, commonly supported by fake news.

To make people aware of this manipulation, Congresso em Foco combined an algorithm that identifies political bots with Twitter’s streaming API, developing a platform on which users could follow and compare the topics most tweeted about by these bots and their response to every new significant event related to the election, up to election day.

By mixing an algorithm that identifies bots and Twitter’s streaming API, we developed this platform that searched tweets in real time and conducted daily analyses of the data gathered.

These data could be visualized in real time on our platform, and the highlights were turned into daily shareable cards, in which the activity tracked was summarized, in order to facilitate the understanding for social networks’ audiences.

By mixing an algorithm that identifies bots and Twitter’s streaming API, we designed this platform that searched tweets in real time and conducted daily analyses of the data gathered.

Thanks to real-time data, instead of just explaining how the political manipulation on social media works, we showed it while it was happening.

People could understand how daily events related to the election and candidates were being used by bots to shape their opinions on social networks.

These data could be visualized in real time on our platform, and the highlights were turned into daily shareable cards, in which the activity tracked was summarized, in order to facilitate the understanding for social networks’ audiences.

Design played an essential role in this project: as the campaign idea was to show people the political manipulation on social media while it was happening, we needed a cool and simple-to-understand - but easy and fast - design. One that would work not just on the platform’s website, but also on our shareable cards.

The use of bots by presidential candidates caught the attention of people and Brazil’s main news outlets, generating huge controversy.

By the end of the 2018 election, our platform had analyzed more than 132 million tweets. Over 173,000 bots were found. These bots had posted more than 4.5 million tweets.

The president-elect – coincidently or not – was the candidate most mentioned by the bots, in more than 3.1 million tweets. And the activity of bots dropped sharply after the election.

Congresso em Foco’s website had its biggest audience in a single month, with more than 5.5 million unique visitors and thousands of shares.

Six months after the Brazilian Election - and before other important elections in India and Europe - Twitter finally had announced that they will strengthen their approach to deliberate attempts to mislead voters.