#ELENÃO: HASHTAG ANALYSIS ON UOL PORTAL IN 2018

#ELENÃO: An analysis of the hashtag on the website UOL in 2018

Abstract

The 2018 presidential elections in Brazil highlighted a dynamic of political polarization and several individuals spoke out against then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. The #elenão movement arose from this and through social media, the movement grew and expanded to several debates of social themes. The objective is to analyze how the hashtag #elenão was reported by the UOL portal, and what is the relevance of this instrument for the realization of the agendas raised in digital activism. The research methodology was based on the Hermeneutics of Depth, a methodological process proposed by John B. Thompson. Through this methodology, we seek to demonstrate and explain the socio-historical context of the rise of the movement. The justification of this research is to evaluate how one of the largest online news portals reported and disseminated the events related to the hashtag. It seeks here to understand how online activism influenced and demarcated the agendas of the news published on the site. The hashtag #elenão has taken a great proportion, generating movements and protests in the streets, being reported by several communication channels. For the theoretical foundation, the theoretical studies of mediatization will be made based on the author Antônio Fausto Neto. The partial results indicates that online journalism had to reinvent itself and readapt to a reality where people are autonomous individuals who choose what they want or do not want to consume. In this way, the chosen news portal based its news according to the demands seen in the social networks, especially the debates raised by feminism, which influenced the coverage of a mainstream media.