Lisbon, April 24, 2025 (Lusa) - The right wing Chega Party has been the amplifier of disinformation in Portugal, what scholars call the "disinformation trumpet", as happened in the 2024 elections, according to experts.
José Moreno, a researcher at the MediaLab of the Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e a Empresa (ISCTE-IUL), recalled a case of this ‘trumpet effect’ in the pre-campaign for the March 2024 legislative elections: a post on social media claiming that party leader Andre Ventura's convoy had been met with gunfire in Famalicão, Braga, which, after verification, was found to be the noise of motorbike exhausts.
Initially, the post, "on a relatively unknown account", had few views. Then it was shared by Rui Paulo Sousa, an MP for Chega, and had 1,700 views on Twitter and only "exploded", with "one million views", when it was shared by the accounts of Chega and its leader, André Ventura.
"The effect here is really one of amplification. Claire Wardle, a disinformation scholar, calls this the disinformation trumpet," said Moreno, one of those responsible for the project to gauge disinformation and content circulating on social networks and online ahead of the 2024 legislative and European elections, which is being repeated this year for the upcoming Portuguese general elections in partnership with the National Electoral Commission (CNE) and the Lusa news agency.
Disinformation, she explained in an interview with Lusa, "starts in a relatively small place, it doesn't have a big impact, but from the moment that some political or non-political actor with great reach picks up on this disinformation and reproduces, propagates or amplifies it, it gains much greater relevance".
In the last two elections, concludes Gustavo Cardoso, leader of the MediaLab project, "there was more disinformation broadcast by the leader of Chega than by the leaders of the other parties".
The sociologist uses the metaphor of pollution to explain: "Disinformation is like the pollution in the air we breathe in cities. There's always pollution, you breathe it in. It doesn't kill you, but it's there. What happens is that there are times when [pollution, like] disinformation, reaches critical levels."
These ‘critical levels’ are reached when "politicians or public figures, celebrities" - and Ventura is an example, according to Gustavo Cardoso - ‘give the “boost”’ for a publication to go viral.
The case of the motorbike exhaust noise has become ‘a case study’ in Portugal, which has made it possible to "show how things work". A year ago, says José Moreno, disinformation was very much centred on corruption and less on immigration, a dominant theme in many European countries, which gained importance in the campaign for the European elections in June.
MediaLab then concluded that the original disinformation about the ‘’gunfire‘’ had ‘’more reach and impact‘’ on social networks than the correction a scant four hours later, made by various ‘’fact checkers‘’.
The project concluded that Chega was a case study in politics and social media, with a simple, populist narrative, a semi-professional structure, supporters who are "digital militants" and who share "a culture of leadership".
And it identified, for the first time in 2024, "signs of external interference in Portugal's election", with online adverts, one accusing the Socialist Party (PS) of corruption and another recalling the Social Democratic Party (PSD) cuts during the troika period (2011-2014).
Until then, no clear evidence of direct external interference in Portuguese elections had ever been detected, according to the team of researchers at MediaLab, which has been monitoring communication about elections on social media and networks in Portugal since 2019.
NS/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
