Mass Phenomena and Social Networks in the Brazilian Political Context: A Psychoanalytic Reading

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the contemporary mass movements present on the Brazilian political scenario in the years 2013 and 2015, as well as their effects on the social bond, based on the contributions of psychoanalysis, using, in particular, Freud's classic texts that deal with the masses, civilization and its discontents and the lacanian elaborations on the discourses that sustain the social bond. With this, we seek to raise some hypotheses and reflect on the phenomenon of mass formation today, where the most powerful tool of contemporary political mobilization stands out: the social networks. Currently, examples in Brazil and around the world of demonstrations convened by social networks, with their power to propagate and disseminate information and misinformation, are growing. In the last ten years, what we have seen is the intensification and complexity of these processes, as the "power" of social networks advances and the way in which it has been establishing itself in our societies. In the copulation between science and capitalism observed in the networks, the algorithms respond and operate according to the interests of the market, manipulating subjectivities.