A different kind of branding: Bolsonaro’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and a brand-new Brazil
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Daniel N. Silva [1]
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[1] Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Brasil
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- Localización: Sociolinguistic Studies, ISSN 1750-8649, Vol. 16, Nº. 4, 2022 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Place branding “during crisis”: The role of language in place branding during the Covid-19 pandemic and post-lockdowns), págs. 461-483
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
This article argues that Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of Covid-19 in Brazil was consistent with his ‘different kind of branding.’ Contrary to the expectations of marketing experts and place branding scholars, Bolsonaro’s branding tactics were predicated not on por-traying Brazil positively to commoditize it to (trans)national audiences but on produc-ing the image of Brazil as a white conservative Christian country through maintaining epistemic and informational crises, delegitimizing expert systems, and engaging in nec-ropolitical calculation. Methodologically, to describe the ‘brand-new’ Brazil projected in Bolsonaro’s presidency (2019–2022), I build three case studies centering on the boycott of Covid-19 vaccines, his strategy of letting the virus spread freely in favor of a supposed herd immunity, and the ‘shadow board’ that helped him build a necropolitical strategy. I suggest that Bolsonaro’s ‘chaotic’ branding project harnessed features of currently exist-ing neoliberalism, including informational entropy, the digital production of ‘alternative facts’, entrepreneurial ethos, the delegitimization of expert systems, and the association between free market and political conservatism
