A study carried out by the consultancy Timelens, specialized in social media monitoring, revealed a 464% increase in mentions of the Central Bank between November 2023 and January 2024. The survey, produced exclusively for the Hour Hshows that this growth is five times greater than the citations to Daniel Vorcaro, owner of Banco Master, which increased 42% in the same period.
In addition to the significant volume of mentions, the study identified a significant change in the sentimentalization of citations to the Central Bank. In November, 35% of references to the BC were negative. This number jumped to 57% in December and reached 82% in the first days of January, representing an increase of 47 percentage points. In contrast, they remained relatively stable: 62% in November, 68% in December and 65% in January.
Narratives constructed on social media
The analysis mapped the narratives propagated by profiles on social networks, many without any history of economic coverage. Banco Master was portrayed as an “innovative institution that upsets large traditional banks”, in a “David versus Goliath” logic. At the same time, posts were disseminated with , especially to the then director of Organization of the Financial System, Renato Gomes, who ended his mandate on December 31st.
According to Renato Dolci, political scientist responsible for the study, the strategy behind the dissemination of this content was well structured: “We see very targeted attacks on the Central Bank’s decision, on Central Bank directors, memes, a lot of content production, disseminated mainly by pages that are not originally political content pages, gossip pages, pages linked to celebrities”.
The survey identified that many of the publications were made by – one of them with 20 million – which allowed a wide reach of the messages. “There is research that shows that 70% of Brazilians present on social networks follow gossip pages, so you can reach a very large volume of people”, explained Dolci.
Among the narratives propagated were allegations of “Central Bank precipitation”, a term used to create a notion of systemic risk, as well as accusations of “personal persecution” and criticism of the institution’s regulatory actions.
The study shows that, while in November mentions of the BC were more organic and related to press news, later the subject began to be dominated by an anti-Central Bank narrative, with content widely disseminated because they do not normally address financial market topics.
