Countering Anti-Gender Disinformation

This project focused on monitoring Brazil’s online disinformation ecosystem, specifically analysing anti-gender narratives disseminated by websites disguised as news outlets. The goal was to generate evidence for demonetisation strategies—targeting the financial mechanisms that sustain and amplify digital platforms spreading hate, pseudoscience, and misinformation about gender, sexuality and human rights.

The final phase of the project was a digital communications campaign aimed at publicly confronting these narratives. In the campaign phase, my approach centred on strategic partnerships with digital rights, democracy, feminist, and LGBTQIA+ organisations.I invited allied organisations with authority on the relevant issues to co-create the content—ensuring the campaign resonated with the diverse values and meanings of democracy held by different audiences, reinforcing an intersectional defence of democratic principles, information integrity, and human rights.

The campaign challenged the framing of hate speech as free speech and positioned disinformation as a direct threat to Brazil’s democratic pact. It exposed how these portals monetise hate through ad revenue, often via algorithms that reward extremist content, and called on brands to take responsibility for where their advertising appears.