Campanha online em disputas locais: um estudo das apropriações do Facebook pelos candidatos nas eleições de 2016

Political campaigns developed on digital platforms are complementary to those ones produced on traditional media. Such relationship has interested researchers and gave birth to a range of studies on how politics are using websites and social media for electoral campaigns. However, most studies are focused on disputes at the national level or at capital cities. Thus, this article intends to discuss the use of online tools on local campaigns in medium-sized cities (less than 200 thousand voters), where social media tools are only incorporated later on the campaigns. To understand how digital platforms are included on such campaigns, we analyzed Facebook pages of three main candidates who ran for Mayor in 2016, in Imperatriz – Maranhao (Brazil): Assis Ramos (PMDB), Ildon Marques (PSB), and Rosângela Curado (PDT). The corpus is composed of 618 publications posted on social network sites between the 16th of August and the 2nd of October 2016. The research is quantitative and works with the thematization, the formats and the discursive strategies on the posts. Its aim is to identify and analyze patterns that are aligned with the literature used, as well as to highlight specific characteristics that differ from online campaigns already studied. Keywords: online campaign, digital social networks, local elections.