Unpacking Digital Politics: A Multi-platform Data Gathering Approach for the 2022 Brazilian Elections

This chapter outlines a methodological approach to studying the uses of digital technologies on elections, particularly in contexts of limited research resources and uneven Internet access by actors. The authors describe their strategy for gathering data across various social media platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) and messaging applications (WhatsApp and Telegram) during the Brazilian 2022 general election. They employed snowball sampling to identify a diverse range of actors supporting the two leading presidential candidates. The chapter details the data extraction techniques used for each platform, emphasizing the use of academic accounts and official APIs to ensure data quality and transparency.