Campanhas na Rede: a utilização do Twitter nas disputas pelas Prefeituras de São Paulo e de Rio de Janeiro em 2012

Abstract

The research seeks to understand the performance on Twitter of the electoral campaigns for mayor in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in 2012, to understand whether there was in fact an strategy that used the possibilities of social networking sites to build an innovative way to campaign. Starting with a literature review that covers from the importance of information flow in different political regimes and informational media coverage of election campaigns, this work discusses the emergence of online campaigns, their main strategies and key concepts such as unfiltered communication, interactivity and mobilization and reviews the discussion of important cases, from the point of view of the application of marketing techniques and political communication. The empirical part of the work, considering the issues raised by the prospect of innovation, evaluates the performance of the candidates for mayor of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in their official profiles of candidates on Twitter and the auxiliary profiles created by some campaigns. The objective was to understand the use of social networking sites by these candidates and if it is related to the traditional way of making election campaigns and for this analysis was performed quantitative and content of publications. The results indicate asymmetries regarding the use of Twitter by the campaigns with the highest and lowest volume of resources existing in the traditional environment of political campaigns. Moreover, there were differences in the performance of the major candidates involved in the election, with candidates in major advantage with the electorate adopted more conservative positions. There was a low number initiatives for mobilizing the Internet users. At last, we emphasized innovative strategies, especially those adopted by candidate Marcelo Freixo, successful in mobilizing voters.