Endorsement Networks in the 2022 Brazilian Presidential Elections: a Case Study on Twitter Data

Online social networks take an increasingly substantive role in modern elections. For example, Twitter (renamed X) provides an online platform to present, discuss and confirm/endorse each other’s opinions. In regard of the 2022 Brazilian Presidential elections, we examine the endorsement networks from supporters of potential presidential candidates to reveal characteristic structural properties of those networks. Their construction has involved a data set with over 20 million tweets; their analysis depicts the development of the online supporters within three months of the 2022 presidential election. Within the networks we look into the roles of the most essential supporters and the presence of social bots. In order to uncover changes between election years, we compare our results to the previous election in 2018. This descriptive network analysis provides an overview of the political engagement of Twitter users during the Brazilian Presidential elections.