The COVID-19 pandemic was both a health and political crisis, marked by the politicization of the pandemic itself. The Bolsonaro government’s denialist stance, with its refusal to implement a coordinated strategy to combat the virus, exacerbated this situation. This research project aims to understand how organized civil society responded to the state’s refusal to effectively address the crisis. The research will be guided by the following question: how did Brazilian civil society react to the denialist far-right, which spread misinformation during the pandemic? Our approach focuses on four interconnected lines of analysis: a) the intense mobilization of mutual aid efforts during the pandemic’s early months; b) advocacy efforts aimed at securing laws and public policies to help protect the population from the virus; c) online mobilization during the investigations conducted at the COVID Parliamentary Committee of Investigation (CPI); and d) the efforts of overlapping networks advocating for the rights of COVID-19 victims and their families. To explore these dynamics, we analyze shifts in tactics and framing used by social movements that emerged in defense of the pandemic’s victims. This study adopts a mixed-methods research design to compare the various forms of mobilization during the pandemic’s critical phase and the post-pandemic period.

Participants (Center)

RESOCIE/UNB: Amanda Barcelos Mota, Amanda Maciel Matos, Ana Carolina Vaz da Silva, Gabriel Santos Elias, Lorena Vilarins dos Santos, Maria Eduarda Batalha Lima, Mariana de Souza Fonseca, Mariana Miranda Tavares, Pedro Burity Borges, Rafael Rocha Viana, Rebecca Neaera Abers; Marisa von Bülow