This comparative study examines the interplay of religious messaging and disinformation in the election campaign material of Jair Bolsonaro and Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the 2022 Brazilian and 2023 Turkish presidential elections. We employ a mixed-methods approach, combining computational keyword filtering and content analysis with qualitative discourse analysis and applied to a corpus of 10,519 posts across seven social media platforms. The analysis informs two key findings. First, in both Bolsonaro and Erdogan’s presidential campaigns, religious rhetoric and symbolism is used to bolster personal authority and in-group support to consolidate the idea of (presiding over) a majority bloc. Second, while disinformation interfaces with religious messaging in both presidential campaigns, we find that religion is overwhelmingly instrumentalized as a vector for political disinformation—thus, we did not identify any significant presence of “religious disinformation,” classically understood. Ultimately, our article creates space for further comparative and region-specific scholarship to explore how religion, politics, and disinformation intersect with authoritarian populism in modern elections and beyond, while also contributing to the conceptual refinement of “religious disinformation.”

中文翻译：

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天堂为祈祷者留有一席之地：2022 年巴西和 2023 年土耳其总统竞选中宗教和虚假信息的工具化


这项比较研究探讨了雅伊尔·博索纳罗 (Jair Bolsonaro) 和雷杰普·塔伊普·埃尔多安 (Recep Tayyip Erdogan) 在 2022 年巴西和 2023 年土耳其总统选举的竞选材料中宗教信息和虚假信息的相互作用。我们采用混合方法，将计算关键词过滤和内容分析与定性话语分析相结合，并应用于七个社交媒体平台上包含 10,519 个帖子的语料库。该分析揭示了两个关键发现。首先，在博尔索纳罗和埃尔多安的总统竞选中，宗教言论和象征主义被用来增强个人权威和群体内支持，以巩固（主持）多数集团的理念。其次，虽然虚假信息在两次总统竞选中都与宗教信息相结合，但我们发现宗教绝大多数被用作政治虚假信息的载体——因此，我们没有发现任何传统意义上的“宗教虚假信息”的显着存在。最终，我们的文章为进一步的比较和针对特定地区的学术研究创造了空间，以探索宗教、政治和虚假信息如何在现代选举及以后的选举中与威权民粹主义相交叉，同时也有助于“宗教虚假信息”概念的完善。