POLITICAL RIGHTS AND VIRTUAL WAR OF DISINFORMATION: THE NEW CHALLENGES TO THE LEGITIMACY OF THE ELECTORAL PROCESS

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the relationship between communication and the legitimacy of elections in a network society, as well as ways to minimize the media power in electoral campaigns in a new environment marked by fake news, due to the excessive use of robots and by the virtual war of disinformation. The research is developed based on a critical-methodological line, with a transdisciplinary approach, which mainly involves the perspectives of law, political science and social communication, in order to investigate the limits of digital communication in the electoral process, as well as what would be the ways to control abuses of media power (associated with political power and economic power) to guarantee the free exercise of political rights by citizens. In the end, it is concluded that there is a great weakness in the regulatory frameworks and their application instruments in guaranteeing the normality and legitimacy of electoral processes, so that there is an urgent need to improve regulation, especially the use of personal data and user profiles, use of malicious social bots and the spread of fake news.