The People Want Real Democracy

Abstract

While critics characterize Jair Bolsonaro's supporters as authoritarian, they don't see themselves that way. For them, their discourses and practices would be truly democratic ones. Considering this premise, the objective of this paper is to present a preliminary research result that seeks to explain how Bolsonaro's supporters mobilize the tensions between individual freedom and democratic institutions to convey notions associated with the word democracy on YouTube. The article raises the hypothesis that these notions associated with the word democracy are based on the political mobilization of fears, and that they find their basis for construction and maintenance in the idea of ​​a good citizen, and not in democratic institutions. To test the hypothesis, this article analyzed interpretations of the case of the arrest of Congressman Daniel Silveira in two self-styled channels supporting Jair Bolsonaro, Te Atualizei and Canal Hipócritas. Coding was used for the organization and analysis of the material, using the grounded theory (GT) as a methodology and based on a theoretical methodological debate with an interpretative framework. The results found confirm the raised hypotheses, although it concerns the particular cases analyzed, without the pretense of generalization.