Credibilidade jornalística, novos atores sociais e teorias da conspiração: a influência das redes sociais digitais na formação da opinião pública

Abstract

This work addresses the influence of digital social networks on the formation of public opinion, focusing on journalistic credibility, amid a rise of new social actors and the increase of the dissemination of fake news and conspiracy theories in the digital space. The objective is to understand how fake news and conspiracy narratives have been propagated, interpreted, and absorbed in the current digital landscape, considering the transformations on the platforms, such as the reconfiguration of Twitter and the growing popularity of TikTok. The methodology adopted was the application of an anonymous questionnaire conducted via Google Forms, using the snowball technique (Vinuto, 2014) to spread the questionnaires and, consequently, obtain the necessary answers. The results indicate a diversity of informational behaviors among the participants, with different levels of adherence, rejection, and ignorance regarding conspiracy theories. It was also found that there is a direct impact of these phenomena on the crisis of journalistic credibility, driven by processes of digitalization, mediatization, and decentralization of content production.