Health Disinformation: A Comparative Study during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil and Spain

Based on a comparative research about health disinformation during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil and Spain this paper discusses one of the new challenges to public health in the digital age. The research compares how editorials of the most read newspapers in Brazil and Spain engaged in debates about governmental measures against the Covid-19 pandemic. The editorials, published between March 2020 and March 2023, revealed much more political conflict and widespread disinformation in Brazil than in Spain. Associating frame analysis to historical and sociological sources the paper compares the editorial’s perspectives in each country as a mean to identify sources and themes of conflict, their protagonists, and positions. According to the editorials, while in Spain there was relative consensus on the measures against the pandemic and political disputes were mainly about legal aspects, in Brazil conflicts about health measures were stronger and involved the far right’s strategic use of disinformation against social distancing, mask use, and vaccination. Based on contemporary discussions on the new technomediatic public sphere, the paper tries to understand how and why health disinformation was not relevant in the European country while it has shaped the way Brazilian society faced the sanitary threat. Among the conclusions, the presentation highlights that health disinformation was widespead in Brazil because of a contextual alliance between the far right government and health market's actors in a network of disinformation coproduction. The results of this research might contribute to comprehend new challenges to public health that associate radical political actors and market interests in the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).