I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Digital Democracy Centre, University of Southern Denmark. Before moving to Denmark, I earned my PhD from the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media, where I was a research fellow at the Center for Media Engagement (CME) and the Technology & Information Policy Institute (TIPI). I hold a master’s degree in the Sociology of Media and Culture from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a bachelor’s degree in Social Communication from ESPM, Brazil.
My research explores how representative politics unfolds in digital media environments. Politicians’ online interactions with citizens may revitalize contemporary democracies, but also erode their foundations. My work examines these tensions and asks how we can foster more democratic forms of digital political engagement.
Publication
Spotlight
Does Social Media Level the Political Field or Reinforce Existing Inequalities?
In this study, we examined whether social media campaigns in the 2022 Brazil elections were inclusive. Our findings revealed that candidates who lacked resources were either absent from social media or received significantly less engagement. Those who already belonged to Brazil’s political class and invested more on content promotion online were more successful in boosting their social media metrics. We also found that campaigns were highly concentrated on populous and rich municipalities, thereby neglecting hundreds of cities in these communication efforts. Overall, our results suggest that social media will reproduce, rather than subvert, existing forms of inequality and exclusion in Brazilian representative politics.
Rodarte, A. K. & Lukito, J. (2024) Does Social Media Level the Political Field or Reinforce Existing Inequalities? Cartographies of the 2022 Brazilian Election. Political Communication.
Rodarte, A. K., Hyunsik Kim, T., & Lukito, J. (2023). Representing “The People”: What Can Social Media Images Reveal About Populist Propaganda in Brazil?. Social Media + Society.
Mimizuka, K., Rodarte, A. K., Arif, A. (2024) On the Fly: How Japanese social media ‘watchers’ improvise to counter misinformation. New Media & Society.
Rodarte, A. K. & Woolley, S. (2024) Bringing Conflict Back In: Computational Propaganda and Totalitarian Political Communication in Brazil. In: Pukallus, S. & Connaughton, S. L. Routledge Handbook of Conflict and Peacebuildinghttps://doi.org/10.4324/9781003392002-15.
Rodarte, A. K. (2018) Marketing como vigilância: implicações e discursos éticos [Marketing as surveillance: ethical discourses and its implications]. In: Peres-Neto, L. and Botella, J. (Org.). Ethics in Networks: Privacy Policies and Public Moralities. Estação das Letras e Cores, São Paulo.
A peek into my latest research
My current research examines why Brazilian parliamentarians engage in narrative contests and how they set in motion new forms of ideological struggle. As these politicians increasingly rely on discursive power to forge representative linkages, I argue that their communicative practices evade public scrutiny and institutional oversight, allowing them to wield unchecked influence over political discourse.
As part of this project, I conducted fieldwork in Brasília in 2023, where I captured the images displayed above.
André K. Rodarte 