Description
During the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections, the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro gained popularity among Brazilians in Japan. In February 2018, Bolsonaro articulated efforts to travel to the country as the first visit of a presidential candidate to the community during a political campaign. The enthusiasm of the local Brazilian community that mobilized to attend Bolsonaro’s public meetings held in Hamamatsu and Oizumi, cities with the largest concentrations of Brazilians in Japan, was reported in news articles in the Brazilian mainstream media and the Brazilian ethnic media in Japan. In October 2018, Bolsonaro was elected president with 55.13% of the votes, but among Brazilians in Japan, he received over 90% of the valid votes. This article discusses the visit’s role as a pseudo-event (Peake & Parks, 2008), drafted to create a positive image of Bolsonaro for his presidential campaign in a controlled situation. We investigated the reflection of the long-distance nationalism of Brazilians in Japan on the visit and its repercussions in Brazil through a content analysis of 16 articles from the Brazilian ethnic media in Japan and the Brazilian mainstream media. We also analyzed the correlation between public mobilization and alignment with moral values expressed by Jair Bolsonaro during his campaign through a content analysis of the videos posted on a Facebook page targeted to Bolsonaro supporters in Japan. The results demonstrated a positive impact of the visit on the ideal representation of Bolsonaro in the press and that the Facebook page reached a larger Brazilian audience.
