Fake news, hate speech and criminal media populism, a corrosive trilogy to brazilian democratic constitutionalism

Abstract

The present article, preliminary result of the research developed in the scope of the scientific initiation in progress in the law course of Unijorge, had the purpose of investigating how the phenomena of fake news, hate speech and media criminal populism, intertwined, corroborate the weakening of the Brazilian democratic constitutionalism, once they are phenomena that have demonstrated the ability to influence the thinking, the communication and behavior of the population, and, thus, foment a disbelief in the democratic values and institutions. The objective of this work was, therefore, to analyze the ways in which these factors relate to democracy and produce impacts on its basic foundations, using bibliographic and documental research. In relation to the specific objectives, we tried to understand the conceptualization of democratic constitutionalism in the Brazilian scenario, and we also tried to understand the influence that hate speech and fake news have in the manipulation of public opinion. Finally, we tried to demonstrate the relation between penal populism, media and democracy. At the end, it was possible to establish a reflection about the crisis of the Brazilian constitutionalism, from the analysis of the referred phenomena, also understanding the way in which the internet and the mass media propitiate the agglutination of these phenomena, which together present a danger to the democratic rule of law.