Political talks and mediatization on Facebook: interactions and conflicts based on comments about the actions of Evangelical Parliament Front¹

Abstract

The article elaborates reflexive notes on comments made on Facebook about the actions of the Evangelical Parliament Front (EPF) regarding the procedures of the Family Statute (PL 6583 of 2013) implementation. We firstly evoked the concept of mediatization in order to address the expansion of interaction opportunities in virtual spaces. Among the most exposed institutions to the dynamics of mediatization, the article turns to the intersections among politics, religion and the ways of activating speeches and conversations on Facebook. The corpus of analysis consists of a set of 2.187 comments published on the official fanpage of Época magazine. The methodological path traced is inspired by references about online conversations and dynamics of argument exchange, reciprocal justification and incivility when what is at stake is a better understanding or resolution of moral problems. The analysis, in turn, is divided into three axes: a) the relationship between interlocutors through identity markers; b) the explanation and justification of premises that support the considerations and arguments exchanged; and c) the negotiation of justice parameters that contemplate collective interests.

Keywords
Midiatization; Religion; Policy; Family; Facebook

Resumo

O artigo elabora reflexões sobre comentários feitos no Facebook acerca das ações da Frente Parlamentar Evangélica (FPE) no que diz respeito aos trâmites de implementação do Estatuto da Família (PL 6583 de 2013). Para isso, em um primeiro momento, evocamos o conceito de midiatização para tratarmos da expansão de oportunidades de interação em espaços virtuais. Dentre as instituições mais expostas às dinâmicas de midiatização, o artigo se volta para as interseções entre política, religião e os modos de ativação de discursos e conversações no Facebook. O corpus de análise é composto por um conjunto de 2.187 comentários publicados na página oficial da revista Época. Para isso, o percurso metodológico traçado se inspira em referências sobre conversações online e dinâmicas de troca de argumentos, justificação recíproca e incivilidade quando se trata de buscar melhor compreensão ou resolução de problemas morais. A análise, por sua vez, está dividida em três eixos: a) o relacionamento entre os interlocutores através de marcadores identitários; b) a explicitação e justificação de premissas que sustentam as considerações e argumentos trocados; e c) a negociação de parâmetros de justiça que contemplem interesses coletivos.

Palavras-chave
Midiatização; Religião; Política; Família; Facebook

Resumen

El artículo elabora reflexiones sobre comentarios hechos en Facebook acerca de las acciones del Frente Parlamentario Evangélico (FPE) en lo referido a los trámites de implementación del Estatuto de la Familia (PL 6583 de 2013). Para ello, en un primer momento, evocamos el concepto de mediatización para tratar la expansión de oportunidades de interacción en espacios virtuales. Entre las instituciones más expuestas a las dinámicas de mediatización, el artículo se vuelve a las intersecciones entre política, religión y los modos de activación de discursos y conversaciones en Facebook. El corpus de análisis está compuesto por un conjunto de 2.187 comentarios publicados en la página oficial de la revista Época. Para ello, el recorrido metodológico trazado se inspira en referencias sobre conversaciones online y dinámicas de intercambio de argumentos, justificación recíproca e incivilidad cuando se trata de buscar mejor comprensión o resolución de problemas morales. El análisis, a su vez, está dividido en tres ejes: a) la relación entre los interlocutores a través de marcadores identitarios; b) la explicitación y justificación de premisas que sustentan las consideraciones y argumentos intercambiados; y c) la negociación de parámetros de justicia que contemplen intereses colectivos.

Palabras clave
Midiatización; Religión; Política; Familia; Facebook

Introduction – Communication (media) and religion studies: mediatization, a conceptual-methodological approach

The studies about communication (media) and religion are not an exclusiveness of the Communication field. On the contrary, the first studies, dated from the early 1960s, derive from subjects such as Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Linguistics and Political Science. It’s only as of the 2000s that the number of studies on media and religion grows within the area of Communication, although not without leaving the doubt “which is the Communication’s specific view?”.

Each study area has its contribution on the matter. Martino (2016) divides the media and religion studies trajectory in three parts. The first one corresponds to the 1960s, time in which the media was (still) seen as secondary in researches on religion, mostly in the Social Sciences’ scope. The second moment marks the beginning of the approach between religion and the Communication area, in the late 1980s, period in which were privileged the forms of communication amid religious leaders and churches with society as a whole. The third moment reflects the own growth of the research on Communication in Brazil.

From 1990 on, various subjects are added in the researcher’s agenda, such as the religion and its relation with mediatic products. As highlighted by Martino (2016), the first specific works on media and religion in Brazil, in the 1980s, were mostly aimed toward the televangelist phenomenon: well-known priests and ministers, responsible for conducting televised masses and services with nationwide reach. The matter interested sociologists and anthropologists, for it implicated in a new way of living the religiosity in Latin America (the televangelist model is originally from the United States) and of researchers of Communication due to its intrinsic relation with the TV.

In the set of 1980’s social transformations, another important phenomenon was the emergence of great neo-Pentecostal churches². A distinctive mark of such churches, since its foundation, was the massive use of means of communication, mainly the TV, to preach its message, during the same time as the Catholic Church also reviewed its approach in communicating with the believers through mediatic devices like the TV. A good segment of researches, then, was preoccupied in analyzing the usage of the means of communication by churches. Martino (2016, p.23 – Our translation) highlights that “as of the 80’s it’s possible to notice media and religion becoming more and more interdependent”.

The advent of the neo-Pentecostals (along with the pentecostals) increased the participation of Christians in the political and public life. The articulations in parties, alliances in pursuit of votes and candidacies driven within the temples are explicit. To Vital and Lopes (2013), belonging to a (neo)pentecostal³ church and the support of leaderships from such churches contributes, many times, to the success of a candidate, that because the (neo)pentecostal churches are present in almost every local: in urban and rural conglomerates, luxury neighborhoods and in peripheral communities, in television, radio and Internet programming.

In this context, researches in religion and politics are evidenced in subjects in the Social Sciences, Political Sciences and Law areas with more strength, since great part of the researchers started worrying about the strong presence of religious people in the National Congress and in politics in general. The discussions around democracy, Brazilian State’s secularism, secularization and ethics set the tone to the majority of the researches and publications. “It’s about a tentativeness of comprehending how [...] it was built in Brazil a national state that defined itself as secular and formed a particular idea of religion and secularism” (MONTERO, 2013, p.23 – Our translation). The Communication field accompanies this slant with proposals of analysis of ways of using the medias in electoral campaigns, candidate’s performances, forms of representation and self-construction of politician’s image among others.

The early 2000s, somehow, marks a change in the Communication research course in Brazil due to the consolidation of the Internet, the digital social media and of a particular (and under construction) theoretical framework about the cyberspace, or digital environments. In the face of a society that begins to engage in a different manner with the media - and here we can’t forget the use of cellphones, tablets, smartphones and akin - a series of researches focused in understanding new ways of religious phenomenon manifestations brokered by digital devices, covered by studies and researches about mediatization. Given that, the very religion is among the institutions most exposed to the mediatization processes, study object of the present article, we’ll dwell a little more into some nuances of the concept and the ways it has been dealt in the academic scopes.

The concept of mediatization isn’t immutable and goes through different disputes regarding its meanings and places of apprehension of the phenomenon. Hjarvard (2012), important researcher in the field, theorizes the ways in which the media acts as an agent of social changes. According to the author, the answers are sought in a new social condition called, precisely, “culture and society’s mediatization”. The task ahead the researchers is to try to understand the manners in which the social institutions and cultural processes changed (and change) character, function and structure in response to the media’s presence. Therefore, Hjarvard’s (2012) concept of mediatization applies to a historical dynamic whereby the media reaches an autonomy as social institution and intertwines in a crucial way to the functioning of other institutions. Thus, the media assumes a dual process, because at the same time as it is part of the social and cultural fabric, it is also an independent institution that interposes itself between the other cultural and social institutions in order to coordinate diverse interactions (HJARVARD, 2012).

With strong presence in Brazilian researches, the concept of mediatization is (also) understood in a broader way as a long-term process according to which the social and cultural institutions and interaction ways amidst subjects are altered as consequence to the means of communication influence growth. Braga (2006) uses the term “mediatization” to address the media influences within society and analyzes how the process of interaction between media and institutions becomes increasingly an interactional process of reference. The media, according to Braga (2006), abandons a ratified place to occupy a place that ratifies the subjects’ life. In other words, the media ceases to be dependent to become something dependent to it, but not without leaving gaps and varied system crossings, that is, without behaving as a hegemonic instance.

In turn, Fausto Neto (2008) states that mediatization is not only about acknowledging the means of communication centrality in the task to organize the interaction processes and says that society’s constitution and functioning are crossed by assumptions and logics of what could be named a “media culture”. For that matter, the means of communication will tend to claim a part of self-referencing developments in a process of creating legitimization and social intelligibility. This process is intertwined by distinct forces, namely, it is interpretative and polysemic.

The concept of mediatization, such as proposed here, doesn’t adopt a supreme vision of a mediated reality and, like the authors, we will work with a concept of non-media-centered mediatization. Prior, however, for us, mediatization relates more with the expansion of the opportunities to interact in virtual spaces, namely, it’s about an intervention of the means of communications in the interaction between individuals and its effects inside a determined institution and in society as a whole (BRAGA, 2006; FAUSTO NETO; FERREIRA; BRAGA; GOMES, 2010; FERREIRA, 2010; HJARVARD, 2012; MARTINO, 2012a; MARTINO, 2012b). About the definition of mediatization dealt in our analysis, we reinforce that the most important is to think that more than an intervention in the means on the interactions, something from the outside in, the processes of mediatization are capable of reconfiguring the own interaction from the inside out, by offering new modalities and possibilities of exchange and of modeling interaction scenes, situations and episodes in which the reciprocal interpellation and the individual and collective expressions are established.

In the bulge of the institutions most exposed to the mediatization dynamics, this article is directed to the intersections between politics, religion and the way of activating speeches in digital social media, mainly Facebook. In the political field, the 2000s, specially during the second decade, is a time of alterations in the modes of participation of the evangelical Christian segment in Brazil. The growth in number of parliamentarians directly or indirectly connected to evangelical churches majorly pentecostal and neo-pentecostal didn’t occur without the help of the means of communication and of an intense dynamic of conquering space, believers and, of course, votes, through the media (CUNHA, 2017). This whole process of political evangelical activism in media coincides with the period of strengthening the evangelical bench between the years of 2002 and 2004 and the posterior creation of the Parliamentary Evangelical Front in 2003 with intense action and support of conservative groups, theme which will be seen hereinafter.

In times of mediatization, with a strong (mutual) influence among media and institutions, between them the religious institution, the new media like Facebook are transformed into debate spaces and opinions about the actions of the own religious institution in politics, scenario to which we shall direct our attention in the analysis section. Prior, however, we begin to discuss the relation established between evangelical politics in Brazil and the law project of the Family Statute.

Religion, politics and the Family Statute (LP 6583)

The Parliamentary Fronts (PFs) are the legislative power representative unions around specific themes. In the federal ambit, the PFs’ formation tenet first occurred in the occasion of the National Constitutional Assembly which drafted the 1988’s Constitution. Even though informally, a group of deputies connected to rural matters united, then, with the objective of drafting some parts of the Constitution and, articulately, oppose to contrary positions towards the agroindustry. In 1997, the Chamber of Deputies already had twelve groups of such sort. Evangelical Parliamentary Front (EPF) is the name given to the set of politicians openly bound to a religious Christian denomination with action in the Deputy Chamber and in the Federal Senate. According to Vital and Lopes (2013, p.9 – Our translation), “the participation of the religious field in the politics is not a new phenomenon, but certainly the visibility and influence along with the governors have made these agents relevant to analysis today”.

From the actions of EPF members, we draw our attention back to 2013’s Law Project (LP) 6583 which “disposes about the Family Statue and gives other measures” (Our translation). The project was created by the federal deputy Anderson Ferreira (PR/PE), EPF member, in order to create clearer rules (laws) towards ruling over the rights of the Brazilian family and the guidelines to public policies towards appreciating of the family entity⁴. It’s important to reinforce that 1988’s Federal Constitution (FC) already possesses a definition of what a family is. According to the FC’s Chapter VII, Article 226, “§ 3 it is acknowledged the stable union between a man and a woman as a family entity, being the duty of the law to facilitate its conversion into a marriage” and “§ 4 it is, also, understood as a family entity the community consisted by any of the parents and their descendants” (Our translation).

The law project which discourses on what is or what should be a family in Brazil arises to create a series of juridical rules capable of giving to - or withdrawing from - affective relationships the title “family”. The defining concept extract isn’t much different from the FC’s text, but, whereas it’s read “it is defined as family entity the social core formed by the union of a men and a woman, by the means of a marriage or stable union, or yet by a community consisted by any of the parents and their descendants”⁵.

The Family Statute text’s final version was approved in September 24^th, 2015. On the occasion, a series of news portals highlighted the matter, each in its own way. For the present article, what interests it is the influence of the mediatization processes in this environment, which is, the idea that the actions of the parliamentarians connected to the EPF around the family theme are reflected by means of communication, appropriated by different publics, mainly in digital networks, and capable of activating a series of speeches in the form of commentaries (re)configurators of relationships and with impacts in the political and religious fields. For that matter, subjects in discussion in the Chamber of Deputies are also discussed in informal settings in such way that the politics go through a process of mediatization that consists in obtaining in the public debate in online environments an appropriation of its agendas, conducts and values in large scale, which is what we’ll see ahead.

Notes on the Facebook comments on Evangelical Parliamentary Front’s (EPF) actions

This section, of empirical-analytical character, tends to weave some notes on Facebook comments in a public page about EPF’s speech and actions related to the Family Statute’s voting process. The proposal is to direct the attention to the comments made by people called upon by the “Family Statute” matter, this is, to look to the repercussions, the conflicts and argumentative dynamics around EPF’s actions. The point is to analyze how the pronouncements and posts made by political agents connected to EPF about moral motifs (like the family constitution, namely, a matter of collective interest) summon different social agents and different courses of action, each with distinct meanings, be it in debate configurations, disputes, antagonisms and negotiations, be it in the expression of an opinion, to which we name “comment” without an explicit interlocution.

The mediatic and discursive configuration of such polemic scenes in the intertwining of politics with religion will be emphasized as of the assumption that the comment elaboration process in Facebook is formed by the interconnection between different communicative contexts, which unite different agents and their specific means of communication; that the political conversation and about politics is an activity that involves public confrontation of moral arguments resulting from these multiple contexts, ideologies and meaning frameworks. In that regard, Schmitt-Beck and Lup (2013) highlight how much the online political discussion is activated and fed by news and information that circulate via widely distributed and accessed journalistic means. In this article’s case, by choosing comments produced in relation to a journalistic text, we consider its potential influence over the determination of the framing to be utilized in conducting the debate (recalling that the mediatic framing, through the selection and salience of terms and events, influences the way “how” a subject is to be worked), but also the fact that such text can be defined as an elite discourse, once the lines there present are a sampling that generally includes only specialists, political agents, spokesmen and social sectors representatives (advocacy). Still, the choices and the construction of the assertions by the interlocutors in a political conversation are strengthened or constrained by the framings offered by mediatic vehicles and by many other discourses with which the interlocutors get in touch with and that, in the dissonant friction, may create fissures in the process of naturalizing specific elite visions via journalistic discourse.

As a way of limiting the set of comments that will offer us subsides to weave some notes on this online dynamic, we’ll go to the posting of the communication vehicle with the most likes and comments on Facebook on the day the commission indeed approved the Family Statute’s text. Therefore, the article analyses 2.187 comments, of this post, published about the news entitled “Chamber approves Family Statute without regarding homossexual relations” on Época’s magazine official page (Figure 1).

Figure 1
Post on Época’s Magazine official page on Facebook⁶

In order to obtain our goals, we evoke the methodological analysis inspirations of online conversations proposed by Witschge (2008, 2011), as well as researches of further authors that have been dedicating themselves to observing how the exchange dynamic of arguments and reciprocal justification contributes to a better comprehension and/or resolution of moral problems (ALTHEMAN; MARTINO; MARQUES, 2016; OLIVEIRA; SARMENTO; MENDONÇA, 2014; MENDONÇA; AMARAL, 2016). According to this optical, digital social media are capable of harboring a dynamic of online conversational exchanges that congregates people in different actions as of different spaces and temporalities⁷.

According to Mutz and Mondak (2006), political conversations can be fed by simple tips indicating the sympathy or antipathy towards a political agent or institution, or by more elaborate arguments regarding norms, laws and public politics connected to social justice. Its content is generally multidimensional, involving not only verbal pronouncements, but also nonverbal, metaphorical and codified pronouncements (like memes, for instance) that have the influence over how explicit messages acquire meaning, intertwining affections, ideologies and regulations. Political conversations are sociable, informal, fluid, but can transform into more structured political discussions oriented to specific goals, as is the Family Statute’s case that, by involving polls and formal debates, entwine daily and institutional dimensions in configuring a broader deliberative⁸ system.

In general, such exchanges are situated in the first comments available and visible on the Facebook page. Out of the 2.187 analyzed comments, 576 belong to conversational exchanges triggered by a specific comment, namely, the direct conversation represents around 26,4%.

However, the interface between politics and religion is capable of activating speeches (comments) in digital social networks that aren’t necessarily in the bulge of direct conversations, once the interlocutors of such comments are not explicit and the replies to such comments are not materially seized. To these comments we give the name of indirect conversation, because even though there isn’t an interlocutor and apparent exchanges, each comment made in a page driven by a determined subject (theme) “talks to” a universe of meanings and to a range of network users. To our yearning of weaving notes on Facebook comments, the posts categorized as indirect conversation are not a problem, on the contrary, they have the power of revealing even more richness of the comment sections on Facebook as of the moment in which in these comments we can also see and learn about diverse performances and performativities⁹, disputes over images, attempts of control and embarrassment of others’ ways of expressions, a tension between the search of the exchange situations definition and the presence of incivility, hate speech and attempts of reducing the other to doing the same (insults to diversity).

The direct conversations are loaded with conflict, opposition, ways of self-expression and collective expression that help us understand the argumentative ways built in the exchanges, beyond identifying beliefs, values and framings from which the users expose and negotiate meanings. We seek building our analysis as of three axes capable of identifying the conflicts, the opposition spots among subjects, the arguments (or lack of thereof) and the way all this reverberates in politics and religion: a) the relationship between the interlocutors through defining markers; b) the explanation and justification of premises that support the exchanged considerations and arguments; and c) the justice parameter negotiation that contemplates collective interests.

About the defining markers, we can perceive the need of some subjects and groups in assuming a position as such to identify with them and mark a clear difference between “we” and “them”. There is an active conservative right online that choruses and reverberates the speech of deputies, members of the evangelical bench and part of the special commission elected to vote the Family Statute’s text, that, by posting their comments, claim a pure, immutable and heteronormative essence of the family concept. These claims are based in a misuse of God’s name, here as a private supernatural entity to determined interpretations of the Christian creed. Hence, the fundamentalist aspect is what shapes direct and indirect conversations whose defining markers relegate to the LGBTQs the title of parted from the possibility of forming a family. Let’s see:

Figure 2
Examples of comments in which the religious fundamentalism is present¹⁰

The fundamentalist term appoints to a series of attitudes from conservatives and integrists natures and emphasizes strict and literal obedience to the set of biblical principles (ARMSTRONG, 2001). Künzli (1995) believes that a fundamentalist person feels as if they are in an ungoverned boat, dragged by a heavy current known as “modernity”, about to shipwreck. There is, however, a way the boat maintains steady in the river course: to preserve the universal and literal Christian religious identity, for only the defining fundaments are capable of controlling the rough waters, that one day got rough exactly because the essence of this identity wasn’t maintained. Hence, the explanations and justifications of premises that sustain the exchanged considerations and arguments are, in large majority, permeated by fundamentalist precepts and anti-fundamentalists.

According to Stott (1999), a fundamentalist person (1) doesn’t believe in any knowledge of scientific subjects; (2) is a liberalist to excess; (3) believes that the biblical canon was dictated by God; (4) believes the biblical texts can be applied directly for him, as if it was written for himself; (5) tends to be suspicious to the ecumenic movement and, more than this, presents characteristics of fierce uncritical rejection to other religions’ creeds; (6) because of this, maybe, tends to endow a separatist orthodoxy, in other words, backs out from any other groups and thoughts that disagree from his dogmatic points of view; (7) presents rejection to “the world”, characterized by any and all contrary positions to his doctrine; (8) tends to defend racial segregation; (9) understands the mission of the Church is, above all, to preach the gospel and (10) is literal about biblical prophecies and tends to create dogmas on the future as of this literalness (STOTT, 1999, p.19-21).

It is possible to perceive, in general, how the points of view are redefined in arguments capable of directing the speeches’ performativity and the agency of the interlocutors that sympathize with the EPF. The fundamentalism, as an interpellation conducting ideology, can both regulate behaviors, rationalities and power fluxes, as acting in the naturalization of moral precepts that regulate the conception of family in our country. When the behaviors are hierarchically regulated, are established control forms that tend to imprison subject’s actions in cause and consequence jails, confining the identities to attribution of restrict roles, reaffirming forced “belongings” and pre-modeled experience trajectories. Let’s see the set of comments selected below in order to comprehend the explications and justifications of premises as of this reading key:

Figure 3
Identity constraints and imprisonments of restricted roles in form of comments¹¹

Thereby, in a dispute for meanings space about what can be called family, the defining heteronormative marker guided by a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian religious canon is a discursive strategy to mark the difference and distinguish holy from profane. The relations EPF establishes with the public created by the Family Statute`s discussion can define the possibility of pattern repetition and moralizing meaning frameworks in a dynamic that is more antagonistic than agonistic. The arguments here approach a monotone “sermon”, highlighting that we shouldn’t dwell only on the content of the speeches, but we must consider the performativity and the declarative relations built among the interagents (FREELON, 2015). We cannot forget that, in our analytical sample, the participants interact with the contents and subjects that sustain diverse opinions, contributing to the polarization, insults and outrage emergence.

The search for an “essence” in the family concept approaches, or of a flexibilization of such essence, becomes the engine that propels the discussions. What is to be seized over the comment analysis is an understanding that, for many, adopting diversity means adopting other’s lifestyle, that is, to be threatened by this other. For that not to happen, the openness to dialogue and exchanges are halted at all times and by any costs, all this facilitated, mainly, by the own social media’s architecture (FREELON, 2015), Facebook amongst them.

As highlighted by Sarmento and Mendonça (2016), in online conversations, respect, rationality and reflexivity compete with political behaviors that frequently aim to collaborate with like-minded others in a way of defending specific ideological goals and establishing borders from the outsiders. This kind of political action cannot be considered as inferior to balanced reciprocal justification aiming understanding. On the contrary, it prevails many times over the communicative action and normative frameworks guided by the ethical empathy exercise stipulated by “ideal role taking”. Still, side by side with this group perspective strengthening (identification and belonging), the conversation serves many times as a projection of self-expression platform, disregarding civility and responsiveness. These authors also highlight how religion and argumentative framings of religious nature can be related to online disrespectful expressions:

We must make it clear that individuals who possess a religion are more disrespectful, but what we argument is that the religious framing present difficulties in warranting a respectful debate about a broad moral question. When the participants use, for example, the rights’ framing, they seem to disagree in a more polite and civic way. This suggests that the religious framing feeds a polarization between two communities and doesn’t offer, like in the rights’ case, a bridge between reflexive and democratic debate

(SARMENTO; MENDONÇA, 2016, p.725 – Our translation).

Furthermore, there are justice parameter negotiations at stake in discussions and in the comments in question. The reading key of religious fundamentalism that calls upon itself to a literal and heteronormative interpretation of the family concept is put in check when themes such as human rights, State secularism and unrestrained love (to love one another) preached by the Christian creed are put in evidence. The appropriation of politician’s actions also activates speeches with the objective of reconfiguration the relations and redefining positions. One redefinition is connected to the other:

Figure 4
Relation reconfiguration comments and position redefiners¹²

We must certify that the speeches are double-edged razors: they are instruments of power and control, but also discursive actions with ability to embarrass and question. Thereof, the speech can mean both a hierarchical order (in a crystallized and domain authorized position), as also an enunciative agency of agents involved in the conversations. Facebook’s comment section, however, functions most of the time as an exclusion and setting apart of differences place, but also as a resistance place in order to refuse the changes proposed by the union of religion and politics such as the Family Statute’s case. The conversations leave marks, express and repress identities, desires, riots, by virtual bodies, non-less real, potent and vocal.

Final considerations

The reflection hereby presented aims to consider, in political online conversations, as much content of the pronouncements offered by the exchanges as the ideological and moral attachments that are established by the interlocutors. The observed interaction covers a multiplicity of interpellation ways, since the balanced search for reciprocal understanding, up to the solidary defense of hateful points of view (without listening of partisan consideration), going through the celebration amongst those who recognize themselves as a “select group” and bearer of truth about a given collective issue. It is here that, in our understanding, is expressed one of the most important dilemmas related to the Family Statute’s discussion conducted by EPF: on one side, the insults and grievances are seen as a threat to the reciprocity and civility of the discursive process conducted by rules and ethical parameters. On the other side, comments that appear on the media coexist (many times in the same message) with personal attacks.

Not rarely, insults can exert an influence much stronger over conversations, because the negative and depreciative slant of the speeches tend to incite a taking of position associated to the defense of “projected identity” of the speakers, namely, their reputation. We can’t forget that we are dealing with a moral issue that’s been majorly framed and guided by EPF and their precepts, which makes it even harder to advance and impose other meaning frameworks that may conduct the online communicative exchanges. Side by side with this question, another equally important matter: many of these exchanges are marked by social pressions that tend to compliance and to a form of governmental and moral control that intertwines rationalities and affections in a mixture that not always helps in open-minded postures or openness to recognition. Power games and impositions of alleged “truths” get mixed in with online conversations creating an ideological performativity that isn’t always attentive to its differences, specificities, demands and vulnerabilities.

Under a more optimistic perspective, Sarmento and Mendonça (2016) affirm that even disrespect to incivility presented in polarized conversations configure a type of reciprocity that, even though not yet privileging a careful and profound listening, it offers us new and valuable moral clues about how a group self-values itself by depreciating other, which uncovers usually non thematized and implicit framings of judgment, founded upon a moral economy (FASSIN, 2015) which is the core of the debate, its logics, rationalities and affections. Therefore, the disrespect, the emergence in exchanges, provides us with a singular opportunity of studying the production, circulation and appropriation of values and affections about a matter. The incivility characterizes a particular historical moment and a specific social world in which the family matter (and its governmentality by State forces) is built through judgements and sentiments that gradually defines a type of common sense and collective understanding about the issue.

The polarized conversation analysis can help us, thus, to realize how the functioning of the norms and laws’ implementation forms is subject to the institutional, political and civic agents’ actions under multiple influences, habits in development, initiatives that are taken and responses from the public to which they’re directed. Interlocutors act based on values and affection, concern or indifference, empathy or indignation, producing a moral economy which conducts the judgments and ethical evaluations connected to implementation processes of law and social justice. In this ambit, the online conversations show that the incivility can either undermine democratic articulation possibilities, or reveal hidden forms of appreciation and depreciation in ways of life and existences.

• 1
  A first draft of this manuscript was presented on the II International Seminary of Researches on Mediatization and Social Processes, that took place on Unisinos, Brazil, in May 2018. The authors are grateful for Dr. Wilson Gomes’ contributions and observations made during said event. The broader research from which the reflections here presented are developed with CAPES’, CNPq’s and FAPEMIG’s support.
• 1
  Este estudo contou com apoio do então Departamento de Popularização e Difusão da Ciência e Tecnologia do então Ministério de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, por meio do CNPq.
• 2
  The neo-pentecostal movement surfaced in the mid-1970s, founded by Brazilians, and transformed into active Christian churches in the 1980s. The neo-pentecostal churches’ mindset has a strong literal attachment to the biblical fundaments and, according to Stott’s (1999) description, it organizes itself around a speech that preaches that the experience disseminated within the temples must be taken to the outside, namely, that the dogmatic discourse must be universalized.
• 3
  Term used to encompass in the same nomenclature the pentecostals and the neo-pentecostals.
• 4
  Excerpt of the Article 1 of the Family Statute.
• 5
  Article 2 of the Family Statute (Our translation), the Statute shows itself willing to undermine rights conquered by the LGBTQs, besides anticipating a series of valorizations acts of heteronormative families.
• 6
  Figure 1’s text translated: To our deputies, the concept of “family” only exists between men and women. What is your opinion?
• 7
  We understand as a conversational exchange those comments followed by reply and rejoinder without a predetermined limit.
• 8
  We are aware that the deliberation differs from the political conversation and discussion - even though it can cover them when considered into a systemic perspective - by demanding high rationality (usage of language to seek mutual understanding), obedience to strict procedural rules (speech ethics) that require from the participants careful and detailed observation of a problem in order to attain the best and fairer solution as possible (MARQUES; MARTINO, 2017).
• 9
  Braga (2010) affirms that communication is always performative. With that in mind, we believe that to learn about the positionings on Facebook towards the “family” theme a possible way is to utilize the concept of performance, that is, the ways people are engaged with their opinion’s performance. Bauman (2014) affirms that the performance is the act of stance-taking. Someone that performs evokes a frame, adopts a determined posture to the act of expressing oneself and utilizes the speech as a communication tool.
• 10
  Figure 2’s text translated: “Since the creation of the earth,the concept of family created by God was between a man and a woman.Therefore,there’s nothing to discuss!!” / “The evolution has been proved , I don’t want your mythological book to be the law.” / “I think it’s perfect. The concept of family comes from the bible and it condemns homosexual relations”.
• 11
  Figure 3’s text translated: “A relevant incentive, for the healthy and immeasurable resumption of balance, resumption in the search and valorization of Family. Foundation for an adequate human formation. May God be always praised!” / “This people need God and not laws, to try to change what was created by God, family was and always will be man, woman and kids, they want it or not because they have free will. The human being changes but the the creator doesn’t he continues the same and requires obedience from his children holiness and abstention from all sinful acts, and that is possible to all the human beings, because jesus died for all those who believe in him are saved… We must love each other as unique human beings in the eyes of God enough proliferating hate this doesn’t pleases God”.
• 12
  Figure 4’s text translated: “Leave the homos alone, guys. (Godssake!) AND ANSWER ME: Single dads. Single moms. “Granny’s” children, uncle’s… Abandoned/adopted children. And other family configurations. What then? What do you do about it? What are these people’s juridical, civil, social rights and whatever else? Really, answer me, I really want to understand this logic” / “If the Country is secular, shouldn’t it be irrelevant what is written in the bible? Ok the deputies are representants of the people, and the majority of brazilians are christians. Because, if Brazil is a secular country, shouldn’t there be accepted all forms of family that already exist in Brazil in all its forms?” / “You gotta be very bitter to try and define how other’s family should be… And for those who try to justify with religion… God preached love above all else, no judgements, but the ´humans´...”.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Oct-Dec 2018

History

• Received
  14 June 2018
• Accepted
  16 Nov 2018