Práticas comunicacionais e circuito de ativação de boatos em desastres ambientais: perspectivas a partir de redes sociais digitais

Abstract

This thesis understands the existence of a rumors activation circuit in digital social networks during the 2017 environmental disasters in Blumenau, Santa Catarina State, caused by the Itajaí-Açu floods. The purpose of the study is to enable the understanding of the circumstances that lead users of digital social networks to share rumors, spreading chaos among those hit directly and / or indirectly in disaster situations. Mismatched and out-of-context information influences users' perceptions of the impacts of the weather event from the theoretical dimensions of the “communicational contract”, “engagement in social networks” and “shared vulnerability”. The hypothesis of the present thesis is that digitally disseminated rumors were a problem in official communication and influenced people in this present disaster. The media faced the need to spend resources to dispel rumors and soften collective hysteria. The research contributes to fill the gap between the thematic intersection of the three theoretical dimensions cited that trigger a “rumors activation circuit” in environmental disasters. The methodological procedures took place in two phases: the first, qualitative, through the researcher's participation in five WhatsApp groups, created during the investigated event, to map the most shared rumors among the groups and which caused discussions among users, whose implications made it possible to configure a research instrument. The second phase, quantitative, comprised a survey of five hundred questionnaires with the public in the region of Blumenau to validate the selected rumors and receive advanced statistical treatments. The corpus selected for the study is analyzed under the aspects of validated scales and acceptable indicators within the structural equation modeling, with theoretical contributions from Adger (2006); Charaudeau (1994, 2006); Baker, Hunt and Rittenburg (2007); Bauman (2008); Kapferer (1993); Recuero (2004, 2009, 2015); Renard (2007); Rouquette (1990) and Wardle (2017). The results pointed out that the “rumors activation circuit” may serve as an instrument to create strategies for crisis management in digital social networks that may have less impact on users' engagement with rumors.