Data for Policy 2026 (DfP'26) Book of Abstracts p 297-298. Published by Data for Policy CIC, London, United Kingdom. 2026.
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This article analyzes how highly connected young adults in Brazil perceive disinformation, security, and trust in digital environments. As platform-mediated communication intensifies alongside automated content distribution and user data extraction, policy debates frequently prioritize technical cybersecurity and regulatory frameworks over citizens' experiential realities. To address this gap, this exploratory study investigates how digital security is perceived by that specific group in Brazil, offering empirical baseline insights for policy discussions on digital governance, public trust, and societal resilience.
Brazil represents a critical case due to pervasive disinformation, digital polarization, and historically low institutional trust. This study addresses the perceptual dimension of digital harms through an expanded exploratory survey conducted between April and August 2026. Out of 152 total submissions gathered, the analytical sample was filtered to N=138 valid responses to strictly isolate the target demographic segment: young adults aged 18–34 reporting intensive daily connectivity (73.2% using the internet over 5 hours daily, with the remaining 26.8% connected between 3 and 5 hours daily). To reach this connected cohort, the structured instrument was distributed via digital snowball sampling across Telegram groups and WhatsApp groups, capturing respondents across 23 Brazilian states. Instead of aiming for national statistical representativeness across all socio-economic strata, the research design intentionally focuses on this cohort as an early-warning indicator of how intensive platform exposure is associated with governance expectations. This is because by targeting individuals with intensive daily connectivity, this study intentionally examines a highly digital cohort. Rather than evaluating digital illiteracy, focusing on this demographic provides a baseline: if even well-informed users with high connectivity perceive a low level of security as an acute issue and report low levels of trust, it underscores that perceived disinformation, security, and trust in digital environments is relevant information for public policy makers. The structured instrument evaluated Likert-scale items regarding digital risk awareness, platform trust, LGPD (General Data Protection Law) awareness, and direct (40.6%) or indirect (87.0%) victimization from digital scams and breaches, complemented by inductive thematic coding of open-ended survey responses (N=138) regarding primary digital security anxieties.
Descriptive metrics and non-parametric cross-tabulations reveal that disinformation, security, and trust in digital environments are fundamentally experiential rather than purely technical. First, concern regarding disinformation is overwhelming: 94.2% of respondents classify it as a severe issue in Brazil, and 95.7% state it threatens critical decision-making processes. Second, a low level of digital security is pervasive: 70.3% do not consider the national digital environment secure. Third, a low level of trust is widespread across both private and public governance actors: 68.1% do not trust companies to handle personal data responsibly, while 58.0% do not trust state data protection capabilities. Fourth, a Mann-Whitney U test indicated no statistically significant variance across gender (p>0.05), confirming that low levels of digital and trust represent a uniform, cross-cutting pattern within this connected demographic. Furthermore, despite high baseline awareness of the LGPD (86.2%), perceived low level of security remains acute, particularly among respondents with prior experience of digital scams and fraud. The qualitative thematic analysis further illuminates these quantitative findings, revealing that primary user anxieties cluster around unauthorized data leaks and privacy exposure (42.0%, n=58), financial scams and identity theft (21.7%, n=30), disinformation and algorithmic manipulation (13.8%, n=19), systemic low levels of digital security (12.3%, n=17), and corporate data misuse paired with institutional opacity (10.1%, n=14).
By framing disinformation, security, and trust in digital environments through the lived experiences and exposure backgrounds of highly connected young adult citizens, this study contributes to the Data for Policy community by bridging the gap between high-level regulatory frameworks and user-level perceptions in Brazil. Although bounded by its focused sample size and non-probability sampling design, the study provides exploratory baseline data demonstrating that effective digital governance cannot rely solely on legal or technical hardening. Instead, it must actively rebuild institutional trust and align policy design with public experiences regarding the level of platform security.
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