At the final stage of the second round campaign, WhatsApp became the main topic of debate about the presidential candidates, with notable impact on the discussion in other social networks – which signal the most relevant trends and agendas in the country’s political discussion via web. The app is always present in the discussions on Twitter and its repercussion as an electoral topic has been growing; from October 1 to October 21, there were 2.57 million references to WhatsApp on the network, 1.57 million of which happened since the 15^th.

Evolution of mentions about WhatsApp on Twitter
Oct 1 – Oct 21

The debate about the app started to increased on Twitter in the beginning of October, just before the first round. Until then, the topic of discussion were the impact of message chains and private groups on the sharing of news and fake data, with a strong ironic tone directed to users who believed the content that they received and who defined their votes using unverified information.

Topics associated with the debate about WhatsApp
Oct 1 – Oct 21

On the 18^h, mentions to WhatsApp started to rise steeply due to a news article by the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo containing a report according to which businesspersons hired message sending packages with content that favored Bolsonaro. In total, since October 1, Bolsonaro was mentioned in 17% of the references to WhatsApp, compared to Haddad’s 8%.