Venezuelan far-right opposition politician, María Corina Machado. Photo: Miguel Gutiérrez/EFE/File photo.
By Misión Verdad – Aug 6, 2024
The attempted coup in the context of the July 28 presidential elections is losing strength in its ability to mobilize. The extremist opposition wing, represented by María Corina Machado and Edmundo González, faces eroding support on social media due to unclear strategy that seeks to replicate failed scenarios of the past, creating uncertainty and low morale among their own followers.
In this context, social media has become a crucial battlefield to maintain the illusion of support and accompaniment that does not hold a real correlate in the streets of Venezuela in the days following the election.
‼️ Atentos:
Hoy, a las 12m, mensaje de @MariaCorinaYA a los venezolanos a través de todas sus redes y las cuentas del #ComandoConVzla.
El 28 de julio #GanóVzla.
¡Difunde! pic.twitter.com/wv7CRlyDaX
— Comando ConVzla (@ConVzlaComando) August 6, 2024
In recent days, there has been a noticeable increase in the appearance of automated accounts—also known as bots—on social media, interacting with both Machado’s campaign command staff and with her own account, as well as that of Edmundo González.
The bots leave comments and repost the content of those pages, promoting the announcements these politicians launch from their accounts. These interventions are characterized by repetitive phrases, prefabricated messages, and automated responses to the topics, framed in the same register of the messages that the far-right opposition has launched since the beginning of the electoral campaign.
VENEZUELA LIBREEE 🙌🇻🇪 pic.twitter.com/GRGNKcOCeM
— Pratik Singh (@officialpratik0) August 3, 2024
The way they interact shows that these bots are programmed to reproduce specific slogans, creating an artificial echo of the ideas and approaches promoted by the aforementioned social media accounts.
What is particularly notable is that many of these accounts come from “users” who do not post content in Spanish, with the majority identifying themselves as being from India and other Asian countries. In many cases, their profiles only have one photograph, lack general or personal information, and are full of spam content.
Social media plays a very important role in influencing the dynamics of the actors who want to deepen the conflict in Venezuela, contributing to creating a distorted perception of the reality.
The institutional response adopted by the Venezuelan government to resolve the post-electoral conflict, together with the insistence of the radical opposition sector on refusing to accept reality and follow established procedures, instead promoting direct foreign intervention and sanctions as pressure mechanisms, has also contributed to undermining enthusiasm for far-right street actions and protests, even from their own supporters.
Calls for foreign intervention have intensified in the context of the ongoing coup agenda in Venezuela, as can be seen in recent examples, such as Leopoldo López making calls on his social media for increased sanctions against Venezuela, or María Corina Machado insisting for the so-called “international community” to endorse the opposition’s narrative of fraud and “intervene” accordingly.
According to numerous analysts, this saturation of bots and fake accounts is beginning to take shape as a dominant trend in the political dynamics of social media.
Electoral Theater in Venezuela: A Tale From Election Day in Caracas
The use of this resource, intended to increase interaction and create the illusion of a political climate that does not exist in support of mobilization for the Machado and González duo, reveals the desperation of the coup agenda to control the narrative in spaces wherever they could still have influence.
Through these technological tools, they try to reduce the visibility of negative or critical comments towards their campaign, generating a knock-on effect that, for now, lets them hold onto a support base that, according to all indications at this time, is in decline.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
