The coverage of the counting of votes and the result of the first round of the Brazilian elections maintained the trend of high international media interest in the country and set a new weekly record in the number of reports on Brazil since the beginning of this survey.
In the week of October 3rd to 9th, 111 reports with prominent mentions of Brazil were recorded in the seven foreign press vehicles analyzed by the International Interest Index (iii-Brazil). The record volume of texts collected is the highest recorded since the analysis began in April 2022.
The tone of the coverage was mostly neutral, with factual reports on the counting of votes, the results and the first political movements in preparation for the second round. In total, 60% of the neutral-toned reports represent matters of a factual nature about the country, without any indication of damage to its reputation abroad. The period also recorded 34% of texts with a negative tone, with the potential to worsen the country’s international image. The total number of positive news, with the potential to improve the country’s image, was 6%.
The large proportion of texts with a neutral tone indicates that the focus of international press attention was on factual coverage of the election results. Some of the foreign publications, such as the British The Guardian and the French Le Monde, even published texts on the counting of votes in Brazil in real time, with numbers and graphs showing the results of the election in the early hours of Monday.
Even so, some vehicles more critical of the Bolsonaro government presented the result of the first round with a negative coverage. The British newspaper, for example, had already positioned itself in favor of the election of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round, and treated Bolsonaro’s growth in the final stretch as bad news, something negative for the country.
Going beyond the data, one of the main focuses of the coverage was the idea that the October 2nd vote and the preparation for the second round are a test for Brazilian democracy. Some of the most important media outlets in the world published opinion pieces and editorials analyzing the results and especially commenting on the higher-than-expected vote for President Jair Bolsonaro.
After the first round, the French newspaper Le Monde, for example, published an editorial warning of what it calls the risks of Bolsonarism marked by religious morals and retrograde values ​​that are rooted in the country. The American The New York Times published an article written by historian André Pagliarini alleging that, with the move to the second round, Bolsonaro got closer to winning a second term and trying to remain in power in an indefinite way.
The Guardian, on the other hand, published an opinion article by researcher Christopher Sabatini talking about the strength of Bolsonarism and claiming that, even if Lula wins the second round, he will have to face strong opposition and turmoil in his government. In Portuguese Público, historian Manuel Loff argued that Brazil appeared to have entered a process of authoritarian transition. In another opinion piece by Público, Bárbara Reis summarizes that with the current government, “the number of weapons in Brazil has tripled, deforestation in the Amazon has gone up 60% and the budget for Science and Innovation has dropped by 30%”. And in the Spanish El PaÃs, the Brazilian journalist said that the election enshrined “villacracy”, a phenomenon described as the act of voting for the worst politicians.
Some reports with an unfavorable content to Brazil are based on issues related to illegal extractivism in the Amazon and indigenous peoples. For example, Clarin addresses the 25% increase in illegal gold mining in 2020-2021 due to lack of government control; among the main buyers of gold mining are Canada (31%), Switzerland (25%) and the United Kingdom (15%). El PaÃs portrays the struggle of women of indigenous peoples, especially the older ones, over the sexist experiences they lived in silence throughout their lives.
retrospective
Since the beginning of April, the iii-Brasil, when studying the international image of Brazil, collected and analyzed an average of 60 articles per week with prominent mentions of the country in the seven analyzed press vehicles.
Over the last 26 weeks, iii-Brasil recorded, on average, 50% of reports with a neutral tone, 39% of mentions with a negative tone and 11% of positive texts about the country.
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