From concerned citizens to civic bots: The bottom-up fight against corruption in Brazil from a longitudinal perspective

Is the interplay between digital media development and anti-corruption initiatives always linear and closely interactive? With this guideline question, this chapter assesses eight Brazilian bottom-up anti-corruption initiatives using a retrospective longitudinal analysis to explore how they intertwine with the digital media that have been rapidly developing over the past 20 years. Brazil provides an interesting context because, since the late 1990s, the country has seen the emergence of fertile and digitally heterogeneous anti-corruption and pro-accountability civil society initiatives at the same time as an impressive increase in the number of internet users. What emerges from the data is that non-linear patterns of interaction between anti-corruption and digital media are crucial to critically assess the role of technology in curbing corruption. The digital literacy and capabilities of activists suggest that there are cases of coevolution at the same time as cases of coexistence and convergence.