Does Freedom of Expression Include Responsibility for What We Circulate? Brazil 2026 Presidential Election
Does Freedom of Expression Include Responsibility for What We Circulate? Brazil 2026 Presidential Election
Informational Territory, attention, and responsibility in Brazil’s 2026 Presidential Election
Maybe it happened today.
A message arrived.
You read it quickly.
Something in it bothered you, confirmed a suspicion, triggered anger, or brought that small sense of relief that comes with thinking:
“I knew it.”
Maybe you shared it.
Maybe you did not fully believe it.
But a few hours later, the same idea came back.
In another video.
In another post.
In someone else’s words.
In a news story.
And then we can begin with a different question:
at what point did something that merely passed in front of us begin to occupy space within us?
When we talk about freedom of expression, we usually begin with the right to speak.
And we need to begin there.
Brazil’s Constitution protects freedom of thought and establishes that intellectual, artistic, scientific, and communicative expression is free from censorship or licensing. It also prohibits political, ideological, and artistic censorship. (tse.jus.br)
A democracy needs to allow criticism.
Doubt.
Religion.
Satire.
Hypotheses.
Disagreement.
And also the right to be wrong.
But perhaps that still does not answer the problem before us in 2026.
Because being able to say something is freedom of expression. Being able to pay for, program, or manipulate a system so that the same message returns millions of times is something else.
Perhaps the problem begins with what we make circulate
We can try a simple distinction.
Saying “I think this policy will be bad for the country” is an opinion or a prediction.
Saying that a particular indicator increased by 30% is a verifiable claim.
Sharing false information while believing it to be true is an error.
Deliberately fabricating an image, statistic, or piece of evidence in order to alter the behavior of others presents a different problem.
We do not need to place everything in the same category.
Because if every mistake becomes disinformation, someone will need to be given permanent authority to decide what may be said.
But if every deliberate manipulation can hide behind the phrase “it is only my opinion,” we also lose something.
Perhaps informational responsibility begins precisely when we become able to perceive these differences.
What if it is not even necessary to make you believe?
Here we encounter something even more interesting.
A message may not need to convince you.
Perhaps it is enough to make it return.
And return.
And return again.
In experiments published in Cognition, Vellani and colleagues observed that a single repetition made participants more likely to share a statement, including false statements; part of this effect was mediated by an increase in perceived accuracy. (sciencedirect.com)
This does not mean repetition mechanically controls what we believe.
But perhaps we can feel something happening.
A familiar phrase seems less strange.
A repeated threat remains available.
A subject stays nearby.
Within 5D Consciousness, we can think of this as spaces that remain pre-activated.
An event activates fear.
Repetition brings that fear back.
Another post encounters what was already available.
A group offers belonging.
An influencer confirms an interpretation.
A campaign connects the emotion to a political choice.
Perhaps we have not decided to believe everything.
But that possibility remains present within the Movement of attention.
I do not need to make you believe everything I say. Perhaps it is enough to determine what you will keep thinking about.
Informational Territory
Perhaps, then, we need to expand what we mean by territory.
Information does not enter us like a file being copied into a computer.
It encounters memory.
History.
Fear.
Desire.
Belonging.
Religion.
Material conditions.
Previous experiences.
Expectations about the future.
We call Informational Territory this environment formed by information, images, news, memes, speeches, algorithms, recommendations, and repetitions that continuously compete for our attention.
It does not replace physical territory.
It begins to move through it.
If technological systems continuously learn which contents produce fear, outrage, desire, belonging, or anger, and use those responses to determine what will be shown again, then Informational Territory begins to participate in what the Body-Territory is able to perceive as relevant.
A study published in 2025 in PNAS Nexus found that, compared with a chronological feed, an engagement-based ranking system amplified politically charged, emotionally intense, and out-group-hostile content. Interestingly, what generated more engagement did not necessarily correspond to what users themselves said they preferred. (doi.org)
Perhaps another kind of freedom appears here.
Not only freedom of expression.
Freedom of attention.
And what about Qualia?
Sometimes we know that a statement is questionable and yet it still captures us.
Perhaps because something in it shines.
Within 5D Consciousness, we can think of Qualia not as a truth detector, but as something that can make a perception, memory, or possibility stand out.
A message can frighten.
Enchant.
Comfort.
Offend.
Feel familiar.
Produce belonging.
And what acquires that brightness can recruit our attention.
That is why asking only:
“Is this true or false?”
may not be enough to understand why a particular narrative became so powerful.
We can add:
what did I feel when this reached me?
What did this message encounter within me?
Why was it able to keep returning?
Perceiving this movement does not eliminate our agency.
Perhaps it is precisely one way of expanding it.
Agency also depends on the conditions within which we choose
This sentence matters.
Because recognizing the power of algorithms does not mean imagining citizens as puppets.
We choose.
But we choose within environments.
Within histories.
Within relationships.
Within possibilities that appear more or less available.
And now also within architectures capable of learning from our movements.
Agency also depends on the conditions within which we choose.
This is where a Decolonial Neuroscience needs to broaden the question.
An approach limited to the individual might ask:
“What does this message do to the brain?”
We can ask something larger:
In which body did this message arrive?
In which territory?
In which language?
After which history?
Within which economic, cultural, and political relations?
Who built the technology that selected what appeared?
Which populations produced the data used to understand behavior?
And which ways of perceiving were left outside?
This concern does not arise only from our model. Contemporary neuroscience itself has been recognizing the dominance of Western and individualistic perspectives, the lack of diversity in research samples, and even biases present in technologies such as EEG and fNIRS. (nature.com)
In Latin America, researchers have also drawn attention to structural inequalities that shape who gets to produce science, which questions become visible, and which forms of knowledge enter international debate. (nature.com)
It is within this dialogue that we situate our proposal for Decolonial Neuroscience.
Not abandoning the brain.
But abandoning the idea that it perceives alone.
When we look at the candidates, we find different fears
Perhaps now we can return to the Brazil 2026 Presidential Election.
When we read the government programs, we notice that the candidates are not exactly answering the same question.
Flávio Bolsonaro looks primarily at the danger of the State and Judiciary exceeding their limits. His program proposes a reform of the Supreme Federal Court and includes a section called “Tesouraço na Censura” — roughly, a “cutback on censorship” — defending the end of state structures that, according to the plan, may monitor, label, or punish opinions. (tse.jus.br)
Romeu Zema goes further in this direction. His plan proposes preventing platforms from excluding profiles or moderating opinions, including when ordered by courts, favoring later mechanisms such as retraction and compensation instead. (tse.jus.br)
Renan Santos also places the risk of restrictions on expression at the center of the discussion. He proposes a new press code and opposes media and internet regulation that, according to his program, would reduce freedom of expression. (tse.jus.br)
Perhaps we can feel the question behind these proposals:
who protects the citizen from those who possess the power to censor?
It is a necessary question.
But there is another one.
Lula’s program places greater emphasis on disinformation and the power of platforms. It proposes advancing the “democratic regulation” of social networks and digital platforms while also affirming the need to fully guarantee freedom of expression. It also proposes a National Digital Literacy Policy aimed at critical navigation and confronting disinformation. (tse.jus.br)
Here the inverse question appears:
who protects the citizen from those who possess the technological power to fabricate and artificially multiply a version of reality?
Augusto Cury comes even closer to the question of attention. His plan discusses fear, outrage, algorithms, engagement, and inequalities of reach, and concludes that the challenge should not simply be to control social networks, but also to educate their users. (tse.jus.br)
Edmilson Costa, meanwhile, proposes a structural transformation of the media system, including strong regulation of Big Tech companies and changes in the ownership of communication infrastructures. Rui Costa Pimenta, through a different path, combines the defense of “unrestricted freedom of expression” with the nationalization of large communication companies under workers’ control. (tse.jus.br)
At this point, the question changes again:
who should own the infrastructure through which a society speaks to itself?
In the official documents we consulted for Ronaldo Caiado, Samara Martins, Clariana Barão, Hertz Dias, and Wilson Grassi, we did not find a general proposal on moderation, disinformation, and platform responsibility as explicit as those above. Caiado’s plan mentions pluralism and protection against censorship in the context of cultural funding, but does not detail a broader model for regulating social platforms at this point. Samara’s official program also does not develop this issue among its summarized proposals. (tse.jus.br)
In the case of Pablo Marçal, who filed a registration request through the PRTB, we did not locate, in the TSE proposal repository consulted on August 22, an official government program that would allow us to attribute a programmatic position to him on this issue. We therefore prefer not to complete his position through inference. (tse.jus.br)
Perhaps this caution is also part of informational responsibility:
when we do not know, say that we still do not know.
Brazil is already trying to respond
The discussion has not remained only within campaign programs.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court redefined parameters for platform liability for third-party content and, in June 2026, concluded adjustments that include structural duties and a so-called duty of care for large platforms in certain situations. (noticias.stf.jus.br)
The Superior Electoral Court also updated election rules for artificial intelligence. Synthetic content used in campaign advertising must be identified, and between 72 hours before and 24 hours after voting, special restrictions apply to the circulation of new synthetic content involving candidates or public figures. (tse.jus.br)
We may agree or disagree with these solutions.
But they reveal something:
the power to circulate has also become political power.
Perhaps freedom also means being able to perceive
We can now return to the message from the beginning.
Before sharing it, perhaps we do not need to ask only:
“Is it true?”
We can observe a little more.
Is it an opinion?
A hypothesis?
A verifiable claim?
Who produced it?
Who paid for its circulation?
Was it boosted?
Was it altered by artificial intelligence?
Why did it appear again?
And there is an even more intimate question:
what did I feel before I checked?
Perhaps this is a small practice of attentional maturity.
It does not mean no longer feeling fear, anger, hope, or belonging.
It means noticing when what has acquired brightness is not necessarily contributing to what we are trying to understand.
And perhaps being able to move attention again.
A Decolonial Neuroscience does not need to tell us what to think.
Perhaps it can help us ask from where we are perceiving.
Informational Territory encounters the Body-Territory.
The Body-Territory encounters its memories.
Qualia highlights possibilities.
Attention moves among spaces that were already pre-activated.
And within that movement, we choose.
Perhaps freedom of expression and responsibility are not enemies.
Perhaps they are both part of a larger question about the conditions that allow us to continue choosing.
That is why, in the Brazil 2026 Presidential Election, it may not be enough to ask:
Who will protect what we are allowed to say?
We can ask together:
Who will protect our ability to perceive how what we hear reached us?
And perhaps this is the question that remains after this text:
Who will have the power to decide what will keep returning to our attention?
References
BRAZIL. Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil of 1988. Articles 5 and 220. Freedom of thought, expression, information, and prohibition of censorship. (tse.jus.br)
BRAZIL. Superior Electoral Court. Government Programs — 2026 Elections. Official documents from PL, Novo, Missão, PT, Avante, PCB, PSD, PCO, UP, PSTU, Democrata, and DC used in the comparison of proposals. (tse.jus.br)
BRAZIL. Superior Electoral Court. Resolution No. 23,755, March 2, 2026. Amendments to electoral advertising rules, artificial intelligence, and synthetic content. (tse.jus.br)
BRAZIL. Supreme Federal Court. Platforms will have 60 days to implement structural measures, STF decides. June 17, 2026. Parameters for platform liability and duty of care. (noticias.stf.jus.br)
VELLANI, V.; ZHENG, S.; ERCELIK, D.; SHAROT, T. The illusory truth effect leads to the spread of misinformation. Cognition, 236, 105421, 2023. DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105421. (sciencedirect.com)
MILLI, S.; CARROLL, M.; WANG, Y.; PANDEY, S.; ZHAO, S.; DRAGAN, A. D. Engagement, user satisfaction, and the amplification of divisive content on social media. PNAS Nexus, 4(3), pgaf062, 2025. DOI 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf062. (doi.org)
SUING, A. Perceptions of disinformation regulation in the Andean community. Frontiers in Communication, 9, 1457480, 2024. Research involving Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru on disinformation, regulation, media literacy, and freedom of expression. (frontiersin.org)
TAYLOR, L.; ROMMELFANGER, K. S. Mitigating white Western individualistic bias and creating more inclusive neuroscience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 23, 389–390, 2022. (nature.com)
WEBB, E. K.; ETTER, J. A.; KWASA, J. A. Addressing racial and phenotypic bias in human neuroscience methods. Nature Neuroscience, 25, 410–414, 2022. Discussion of methodological biases, including EEG and fNIRS. (nature.com)
SILVA, A. et al. Addressing the opportunity gap in the Latin American neuroscience community. Nature Neuroscience, 25, 1115–1118, 2022. DOI 10.1038/s41593-022-01154-x. (nature.com)
KOPAL, J.; UDDIN, L. Q.; BZDOK, D. The end game: respecting major sources of population diversity. Nature Methods, 20, 1122–1128, 2023. Discussion of population diversity and the limits of generalization in human neuroscience. (nature.com)
