In Brazil, Internet and social media have been long used by political parties and candidates to campaign, but it was only in 2017 that organic electoral advertising on social media, social media boosting and paid promotion in web search engines were included in the list of permitted electoral campaign expenditures. This was an encouraging move as it not only made an additional tool available for political actors to reach out to voters, but also obliged them to report on campaign spending using those tools.

Based on the analysis of the online campaign finance ecosystem in Brazil, this case study lays out lessons learned and some considerations for the stakeholders.

This case study is part of International IDEA’s Political Finance in the Digital Age project.