04/06/2024

Disinformation engagement in the debate on reproductive justice on Facebook and Instagram

By: FGV Direito Rio

On Facebook, posts that conveyed explicitly or potentially disinformative content received, proportionally, about 200 times more interactions than those with informative content. On Instagram, this difference was 6.7 times more interactions for posts with disinformation;
Political profiles and alternative media were the main sources of disinformation on Facebook, even though the volume of these posts was low compared to others;
On Instagram, it was content creators and political profiles that posted the most explicitly or potentially disinformative content;
In the categories of content creators and alternative media on Instagram, the differences between the number of posts for and against abortion were small. While content creators posted more in favor of the topic, alternative media profiles, in addition to publishing more informative posts, also posted against abortion more often. On Facebook, more informative posts from alternative media circulated compared to other types.

Presentation

In the second half of 2023, the debate on the decriminalization of abortion returned to the agenda in the Supreme Federal Court[1] with the Argument of Non-Compliance with a Fundamental Precept (ADPF) 442[2]. On that occasion, Minister Rosa Weber, the case's rapporteur, delivered a vote addressing the concept of "reproductive justice," which can be understood both as a movement for sexual and reproductive rights and as a theoretical framework that promotes intersectionality and human rights[3].

The issue once again reverberated on social media in April and May 2024[4] due to the publication of Resolution No. 2,378/2024[5] by the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM), prohibiting the medical act of fetal asystole for "(...) interruption of pregnancy in cases of legally provided abortion, i.e., fetus resulting from rape, when there is a probability of fetal survival at gestational age above 22 weeks." A few days later, its effects were suspended, first by Judge Paula Weber Rosita of the Federal Court of Rio Grande do Sul and then by the Minister of the Supreme Court (STF), Alexandre de Moraes. The CFM norm will remain suspended until the final judgment of the ADPFs on the issue by the Supreme Court - on a date yet to be defined[6].

In this scenario, we identified a mobilization of actors in defense of the resolution, with narratives against the legalization of abortion, and groups opposing it, primarily advocating for reproductive justice. Given the relevance and sensitivity of the issue, the objective of this report is to analyze whether there is misinformation in the debate about the CFM resolution on Facebook and Instagram, and if so, what strategies are being used.

Methodology

This report was compiled from two datasets of posts made on the Facebook and Instagram platforms between March 14 and April 23, 2024. The data were extracted from these networks using a linguistic[1] filtering rule guided by expressions and hashtags related to the topic of abortion, such as (de)criminalization of this practice, reproductive justice, and the CFM resolution[2].

A total of 1,378 posts were extracted from Facebook and 765 from Instagram. Upon initial inspection, 400 posts on Facebook and 205 on Instagram were found to be unrelated to the scope of this report. These posts were disregarded, leaving 978 and 560 posts from Facebook and Instagram, respectively. In both sets of posts, we also identified identical messages[3] published multiple times on the platforms, with 73 posts replicated 213 times on Facebook and 42 posts replicated 55 times on Instagram. We retained these repeated publications only for the construction of timelines and calculation of the average interactions of the content on each platform.

At a later stage, we removed the repeated publications (213 from Facebook and 55 from Instagram), keeping only one post from each for qualitative analysis. We chose to keep the repeated post with the highest total interactions or, in cases where the value was identical in all cases, the one posted by the profile with the highest number of followers. As a result, there were 692 posts from Facebook and 505 from Instagram remaining.

The qualitative analysis of profiles and post content was conducted considering the available links, videos, and images for consultation. The categorization of profiles was initially based on the classification proposed by Nina Santos (2020)[1], adapted and also used in other reports of this research project[2]. We employed the following categories in this study: (i) content creator; (ii) government; (iii) alternative media; (iv) traditional media; and (v) political[3]. In the specific case of Facebook, we also created a category for when posts occurred in public groups on the platform.

Para análise de conteúdo, classificamos os posts considerando dois aspectos principais:

For content analysis, we classified the posts considering two main aspects:

(i) Position conveyed on the topic, which could be:

In favor: refers to posts supportive of legal and safe abortion, the decriminalization of the act, or messages opposing the CFM resolution and advocating for the rights of women and individuals who are pregnant, for example;
Against: refers to posts against abortion, condemning this practice (even in cases provided by law), messages supportive of the CFM resolution, or expressing support for an absolute right to life;
Informative: refers to posts that disseminate information about the topic, of a purely informative nature, without presenting a predominant position explicitly, resembling journalistic headlines and calls.

(ii) Basis and/or justification, subdivided into:

Misinformation: the message disseminates content that is explicitly or potentially misleading, as well as contextually misleading content on the topic, spreading, for example, false information about groups supportive/activists for sexual and reproductive rights or about legal means of accessing voluntary termination of pregnancy;
Moral: encompasses pro-life arguments, defending the beginning of life from conception or associating abortion with murder, for example. It is a category distinct from religious grounds, as it does not present elements of such nature;
Religion: encompasses pro-life arguments but with characteristics of typically religious discourse, either through references to religious texts and figures - regardless of the professed faith - or through the narrative device of sanctification of life in light of religious belief;
Legal: posts that, for example, mobilize the law to restrict existing rights (such as access to legal and safe abortion), or criminalize the practice of abortion;
Health: resort to the protection of health and physical integrity, which can be either of the fetus or of the woman or pregnant person;
Reproductive justice: encompasses arguments in favor of legal and safe abortion due to the reproductive autonomy of women and pregnant individuals, as well as the defense of sexual and reproductive rights, for example. It considers the need to ensure social and economic rights for the realization of sexual and reproductive rights[1].

The main analyses presented in this report, therefore, concern the 692 posts published by 374 profiles and 74 groups on Facebook (totaling 448 different pages), and 505 posts from 299 different profiles on Instagram.

1. Facebook

I. General characteristics of the posts on Facebook

The Graph 1 below shows the evolution of posts about abortion published between March 14 and April 23, 2024, on Facebook. Out of the total of 978 posts identified on the platform, including those that were published more than once, 621 posts were published between April 4 and 19.

Graph 1: Number of posts about abortion on Facebook between March 14 and April 23, 2024.