From the Hate Cabinet to the Love Cabinet: The Case of Brazil

Scholarly attention has already recognized the centrality of social media platforms for elections, including the spread of dis/misinformation and how this can be recently amplified by AI technology. However, little research has investigated the way progressive campaigns are appropriating platforms to foster social change. This paper investigates digital activism for social and political mobilization. Chat apps such as WhatsApp are more than a digital space for “hanging out” with like-minded people: they have gradually become a key platform for social and political mobilization, particularly in Global South countries. They create new possibilities of communication with impact on the political sphere, digital activism, and elections. This paper investigates how WhatsApp as a platform has been appropriated by local communities in Florianópolis, Brazil. Aware of the importance of highlighting the Global South context beyond a Western-centered perspective, the paper looks at #Campeche and South of the Island Popular Struggle Committee WhatsApp group. The analysis is structured via three research levels: communication repertoires (whether WhatsApp is a levelling communication tool that elevates the profile of marginalized players in the political system and how many affordances influence what happens through and because of them); context (Brazilian context matters beyond the Global North); local level (the consequences for local democracy). In doing so, the article poses the research question is: How does the Love Cabinet foster an emerging strategy to collect votes? It has three main contributions: i) the methodology comprehends of triangulation of qualitative methods, by combining content analysis, and digital ethnography of chat apps groups; ii) it encourages and has its main motivation to investigate the so-called “love cabinet” to successfully implement the values of plural participation, social inclusion, and bottom-up innovation in today’s platform society; iii) little research has privileged to investigate the love cabinet from the Global South(s).