Brazil as a World Epicenter of COVID- 19: Study of Social Representations

In 2019 a new coronavirus was reported and rapidly took the world into a pandemic that demanded a series of sanitary measures. In a short time, the debate concerning the lethality and consequences of COVID-19 became politicized and split opinions. In order to analyze the Social Representations of Brazilian internet users about Brazil as the world epicenter of COVID-19, this study examined a corpus composed of 1.321 comments posted on the Facebook pages of three major newspapers in Brazil. A lexicographical analysis was performed on the material through the software IRaMuTeQ. Comments were polarized, dividing the internet users between believers and unbelievers regarding the disease. Ideological elements of the extreme right were observed in the contents of the negationist comments, and may be related to the spread of the disease.