Paper short abstract:

Social media has played a part in recent attacks on government institutions in USA and Brazil. Both events share the narrative of corrupted government hiding falsified elections results. I focus on the vernacular authority of social media and how it can motivate the large and even violent protests.

Paper long abstract:

Large groups of people can be inspired to take on governmental institutions, even physically assault and damage governmental buildings, via the use of social media. Just at the start of this year, this culminated in Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaros supporters storming among others the National Congress of Brazil. This event was reminiscent of the Capitol attack in Washington D.C, USA, on 6th of January 2021. Even more so that in both of the cases the key motivation was to bring in to light the alleged corruption in the government with its falsified results of the presidential elections just held. This narrative of the false elections and the threat to democracy bolstered the sense of some, the participants, of being the frontline in the fight for democracy, while others viewed them as the out rigth enemy of the democratic system. In both cases the former presidents, Bolsonaro and Trump, were seen as encouraging the protesters, even if condemming the extent of the events afterwards. Social media also presents individual characters that continue to be part of the media sphere even in the aftermath of the events, one example being the QAnon Shaman that was one the spearhead figures, or atleast one of the more noticeable figures of the Capitol attack. I’m interested in how content shared via social media, and the vernacular authority of that content, is used and how that builds up to mass protest events. What creates the sense of ”defenders of democracy” and their enemy.