Despite strong mobilization on social media by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro after his arrest, the video showing the attempted ankle bracelet violation ended up disrupting the group’s narrative. A poll by the Democracy Institute of Xeque shows that Bolsonaro’s attempt to hurt Bolsonaro has been undermined by the difficulty of providing a concise explanation for the act of burning surveillance equipment. The analysis also indicates that the event was one of the largest digital mobilization events in the country’s modern history.
- resolution: The STF made a unanimous decision to maintain Bolsonaro’s preventive detention
- science: Flavio was chosen as his father’s spokesman after his arrest, and says the opposition’s “only goal” is to agree to an amnesty
The Democracia em
The analysis also noted that images of the offending ankle bracelet were highlighted in posts from the left, which exploited the content, seen as evidence that Bolsonaro could no longer be under house arrest, to mock the former president and his children. 85 hashtags were identified as being used in a coordinated manner in the posts, 31 of which were associated with the right, such as #BolsonaroPresoPolitico (3,568), #FreeBolsonaro (2,555), and #LibertemBolsonaro (1,321), and ten with the left, such as #BolsonaroPreso (2,887) and #BolsonaroNaCadeia (1,168). #BolsonaroNakadia (758).
The public controversy over Bolsonaro’s arrest multiplied 36 times after the former president was transferred to the Federal Police Supervision Authority. The topic had already been discussed before, given the deadline for the appeal of Bolsonaro’s defense in the case in which he was convicted of promoting a coup attempt, scheduled for Tuesday. In the days leading up to the arrest (11/17 to 11/21), the topic remained at a moderate level, with only a few posts identified.
Democracia em Xeque’s work also showed balance on the platforms Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and
/i.s3.glbimg.com/v1/AUTH_da025474c0c44edd99332dddb09cabe8/internal_photos/bs/2025/b/K/7Y7pkASGmFK1Wgqw3yrQ/pol-2511-comparacao-posts-web-1-.jpg)
A survey conducted by Arquimedes also showed that the arrest of Jair Bolsonaro registered a record number of negative mentions for the former president in 2025. Between November 22 and 24, as of 6 p.m., 2.56 million mentions were recorded on the monitored platforms (X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Reddit).
– This episode shows that Bolsonaro remains one of the actors with the greatest ability to generate interest on Brazilian networks. But at the same time, it reveals that this ability does not translate into strong or expanded support. Pretrial detention caused a sensation, but was characterized by majority criticism, accumulated wear and tear, and little expansion of the base of solidarity. It is clear that anti-Bolsonarianism is also a force in the digital debate on politics, going beyond organized leftist groups, reaching other audiences – as researcher Pedro Brozzi explains
Bolsonaro’s popularity on networks was confirmed by Bytes’ analysis, which determined that posts by supporters of the former president had 47.3 million interactions. The posts of federal representatives Nicolas Ferreira (PL-MG) and André Fernandez (PL-CE), as well as the governor of São Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas (Republicans), featured.
“The ongoing war of narratives”
A survey by Ativaweb DataLab, which analyzed more than 29 million mentions on social networks related to Bolsonaro, between Saturday at 6 a.m. and Monday at 9 a.m., deemed the event one of the largest digital mobilization events in the country’s modern history. Among what was reported about prison, 41.9% opposed it, 35.8% opposed it, and 22.3% opposed it.
According to Alec Maracaga, CEO of Ativaweb, the event once again demonstrated the polarization that dominates the dispute over space on social networks.
– The Brazilian digital environment no longer functions as a space for debate, but rather as a field for an ongoing narrative war, where polarization is no longer an episodic phenomenon, but rather a permanent structure of political and social behavior – he explains.
But it is possible to identify a right-wing dominance in public groups on messaging applications, such as WhatsApp and Telegram. According to the Palver consulting company, which monitors more than 100,000 groups, from November 21 to 23, 63% of users who expressed their opinion were against the preventive detention ordered by Alexandre de Moraes. Another 37% supported this.