“BOTA FOGO NESSES VAGABUNDOS!”: ENTEXTUALIZATIONS OF XENOPHOBIA IN THE TEXTUAL TRAJECTORY OF A FAKE NEWS

ABSTRACT

With the emergence of the internet as an infrastructure for innovation in communication modes, fake news production has grown profusely, facilitating modes of publishing and sharing false information and news. Fake news has extrapolated the materiality of the texts and increased hate speech in society and violations of human rights, such as xenophobic attacks on immigrants in Brazil. In this study, we seek to analyze which entextualizations were mobilized in the textual trajectory of a fake news on different digital platforms and what positions the participants of the interaction take in relation to the situation of crisis migration in the country. This work is based on the theoretical-analytical constructs of Applied Linguistics (Moita Lopes, 2006; Cavalcanti, 2013). The corpus covers the textual trajectory of the event ‘Bota Fogo!’, referring to the attack on Venezuelan immigrants in Pacaraima, occurred on August 18, 2018. The results indicate that the spread of fake news mobilizes prejudiced discursive-identity positions in virtual interactions, but also drives xenophobic reactions outside online networks.

Keywords:
fake news; crisis migrants; xenophobia