Emotion, reason, and political attacks on Facebook: the use of rhetorical appeals in the 2014 Brazilian presidential race

Abstract

This chapter analyzes how Facebook worked as an environment for negative campaigning in the 2014 Brazilian presidential elections. More specifically, we investigate the Facebook posts published by the two leading candidates – Dilma Rousseff (Workers’ Party) and Aécio Neves (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) – in order to answer the following questions: (1) What were the most common rhetorical appeals used by the candidates during the dispute? (2) How did the use of these appeals vary throughout the dispute? (3) How may the attacks have influenced voters’ perception of the candidates considering the results of the opinion polls? The results indicate that Rousseff and Neves preferred to use emotional appeals in their publications. Moreover, Neves may have been a victim of the so-called “boomerang effect” – especially in the second round, when he faced a decrease in his voting intentions after deciding to sponsor more negative ads on Facebook.