Atividade do juiz eleitoral e fake news: uma revisão da literatura e percepção sobre a prática

Abstract

This dissertation deals with the communicative phenomenon of Fake News in elections and its relation to the activity of the electoral judge. The research aimed to analyze the scientific and legal productions about the theme, and the perception of the professionals in question, as well as to characterize the main theoretical and methodological approaches about Fake News and the possible ways to fight them in the electoral process. To this end, methodologically, a qualitative approach was developed that included two types of data collection. One was an review of the scientific literature on Fake News, synthesizing knowledge by combining data from theoretical and empirical studies. This review was conducted in five stages, following the guiding question defined in the first of them: "How to prevent fake news from negatively interfering with the conduct of the electoral process?" For the bibliographical survey, three criteria were taken into account: search source; geographical origin of the publications; and descriptors defined for the study. The search for articles was followed by the selection of those in conformity with this research, critical analysis of the selected material, and systematization of the analyzed content. The other stage of data collection was the execution of exploratory semi-structured interviews with four electoral judges of the state of Bahia, aiming to build, with their perspective, a notion about the role these professionals play in the confrontation of Fake News. The semi-structured format allowed the interviewees to expose in their own way how they deal with the questions asked, while ensuring the fulfillment of the objectives of the interview script designed for this purpose. The main topics asked involved the occurrence of lawsuits related to fake news and the perception of these judges regarding the State mechanisms and the legal field to face the phenomenon in elections. The interviews were conducted after the 2022 election period, in person or virtually, with an average duration of 21 minutes each. Having been recorded and later transcribed, these speeches were then analyzed by reading, considering in this procedure the researcher's experience and understanding of the ideas explained by the interviewees. The discourse analysis operationalization occurred through the division of the collected answers, which served as a basis for the elaboration of six descriptive categories. Next, this content was combined with the data systematized in the integrative review, resulting in the conclusive contributions of this work. As is typical of integrative reviews, these conclusions also include the researcher's reflections on the results obtained. These revealed as a new aspect about Fake News that the phenomenon represents a window to the serious moment of crisis, which extends to the political system, the press, education and, consequently, the judiciary. Hence the relevance of the proposal of practical action in the educational field that this work presents through the structuring of the "Ethical-Media Education Course", to be given to the servers of the courts in Bahia, in order to enable them to identify Fake News and awaken them to the seriousness of the historical moment on the subject.