Speech and deforestationevidence from the impact of Bolsonaro’s tweets in the brazilian Amazon

Resumo

Can a leader’s speech affect real-life outcomes? Can politicians’ messages in social media change the perceived societal acceptance of behavior, such as illegal deforestation? To answer these questions, I explore the specific context of the rise in Brazil’s politics of a very influential leader with a clear discourse on socio-environmental issues, Jair Bolsonaro, to analyze the relationship between speech and deforestation. By looking at his official Twitter account, I create a measure of the intensity of negative discourse on the environmental issues, and, by interacting it with political support in the 2018 election, I find evidence of the effect of his speech on deforestation. One standard deviation increase on Bolsonaro’s negative tweets’ measure is associated with 7.81% more deforestation in municipalities that supported him than municipalities that did not. The effect is significant and robust to different empirical model specifications and definitions of political support.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Dissertação

Ano

2020

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Inglês

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/30421

Temas

Administração PúblicaMeio Ambiente

Palavras-chave

PoliticsLeadershipEnvironmentImpactSocial mediaSocial normsBehaviorDeforestationAmazonAdministração públicaPolíticos - Brasil - AtitudesRedes sociais on-line - Aspectos políticosDesmatamento - Amazônia