Online Violence in Brazil: scenario and perspectives

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present the preliminary results of the Brazilian Observatory of Online Violence, which promoted an analysis of the journalistic material published in the G1 and Uol sites during the period of 12 years, from 2007 to 2019. These results contribute because they present primary data on the question of online violence in the country, as this phenomenon suffers from a profound lack of data and scientific production in general. As a theoretical basis, we worked national and international references that deal with the topic of online violence. From a methodological point of view, we did an exploratory research based on the technique of collecting and analyzing systematic observation data associated with Content Analysis, with a qualitative and quantitative approach. In total, 3,517 journalistic materials were collected that dealt with some type of violence and of these 390, specifically, about online violence. As main findings, we highlight the growing number of cases published in the newspapers. In addition, we found that the vast majority of cases bring women as victims and men as aggressors. We also emphasize that the main types of violence are crimes against honor, bullying, leakage of intimate images without consent and hate speech.