Attacks and defenses in electoral debates on television: the strategies adopted by Brazilian presidential candidates in 2018

Abstract

This article presents a study of presidential candidates’ strategies in Brazilian elections’ debates of 2018, considering the historical relevance of this object of study for the majority disputes in Brazil. The symbolic aspects of candidates’ participation were analyzed, observing three main characteristics: discursive strategies, strategy focus and predominant attribute in the discourse. The methodology used is the Quantitative Content Analysis, applied in a corpus formed by 795 participations, from seven different debates, broadcasted during the first round of the 2018’s presidential dispute. The results indicate that the candidates attacked more the political attributes of their opponents. The attacks were made mostly by challenging candidates and the main targets were PT’s and MDB’s candidates. Both of the parties have recently led the Federal Government. Moreover, it is observed how, comparatively, Fernando Haddad (PT) was the one who most resorted to defense as a discursive strategy.