Legislative 2025 – Information and Disinformation on Social Media

• July 18, 2025
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This report is the result of a collaboration protocol established between MediaLab CIES Iscte and the CNE – National Election Commission, with the support of the LUSA and Democracy Agency in Sheikh, for the monitoring and screening of political disinformation in the context of the parliamentary elections of 18 May 2025 in Portugal. It is produced and published by OberCom – Observatory for Communication as part of the Observatory’s work as a member of the IBERIFIER – Iberian Digital Media Observatory.

This document maps content published on the social networks Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and TikTok, in Portugal in the pre-campaign and election campaign period, between 21 April and 18 May, in some cases drawing comparisons with the 2024 and 2022 elections.

The report is organised into six chapters: (1) analysis of the quantity, scope and interaction of party publications; (2) equivalent analysis applied to party leaders; (3) analysis of references to candidates on social media; (4) comparison of narratives on immigration and corruption between the 2022, 2024 and 2025 parliamentary elections; (5) identification of the main non-informing narratives and their main disseminators in the 2025 parliamentary elections; and (6) identification of observed disinformation amplification strategies.

The data collected indicate that the Chega party and André Ventura are the political actors that perform best in capturing the attention of social media users. X is the network of choice for discussing political and electoral issues among citizens, but Facebook is the one that provides more interactions and views to the content of parties and candidates, with a notorious growth of TikTok.

The report concludes that the issue of immigration has become central to political discussion in Portugal, having largely overcome the issue of corruption, which had been central in previous elections. Between 2024 and 2025, the number of Facebook posts on immigration in Portugal increased by more than 200%. As a result, most of the disinformation episodes detected are part of the narratives that ‘Portugal is being invaded’ and that there is an ongoing process of ‘Islamisation’ in our country.

This project received funding from the European Commission under Call DIGITAL-2023-DEPLOY-04, European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) – National and multinational hubs – Project: IBERIFIER Plus – 101158511.

Recommended Quote (APA 7th):

Cardoso, C., Moreno, J., Narciso, I., Couraceiro, P., & Santos, J. (2025). Legislative 2025 – Information and disinformation on social media. OberCom – Communication Observatory. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15781756

The full report is available below in Portuguese and English.

See or download the full report here  Download the report here