Indigenous People and Digital Misinformation in the Brazilian Amazon

‘Necropolitics’ was used to produce a misinformation bubble impacting the Amazon’s Indigenous people. Given that these communities are widely dispersed in a territory where physical infrastructure offers limited access, communication via WhatsApp is a central resource. However, WhatsApp has also been a central channel for disinformation campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially because messages were encrypted, which the company says makes it impossible to filter misleading information. Several stories about misinformation and an influx of negationist videos and memes, including conspiracy theories spreading extensively via WhatsApp groups into isolated communities have been cited in the Brazilian Amazon. Is this a global situation affecting indigenous people? Are WhatsApp and other social media especially dangerous in this regard? How can we analyse these situations under current models describing information behaviour into the Information Society platform ecosystem? These are the central questions we address in this chapter.