ARE OUTLIERS OUTSIDERS? PROFILE OF STATE DEPUTIES WHO HAVE BEEN “HEAVY DIGITAL-MEDIA USERS” IN THE 2019-2023 LEGISLATURE Sérgio Braga 1 Diogo Tavares 2 Rafael Linhares e Padilha 3 Márcio Giovanni Macedo 4 Abstract: This study aims at analyzing the use of digital media by Brazilian state deputies in the 2019-2023 legislature. An attempt will be made at answering the following question: can representatives who intensively use digital media in each state of the Brazilian federation (outliers) also be considered “outsiders”, that is, representatives who are new to political activity? To evaluate such a phenomenon, we will focus on analyzing the use of the two public digital media most often used by Brazilian state deputies in the 2019-2020 period: Facebook and Instagram, analyzing whether that use is associated with certain characteristics of the deputies’ political careers. The results indicate that this phenomenon occurs on Instagram, but not on Facebook, that is, the most recent public social media are used more intensively by representatives who are “outsiders”. Keywords: Parliamentary public communication; Political elites; Outsiders; Outliers; Political representation. 1 Introduction: outliers and outsiders as a research problem 5 In recent years, there has been intense debate, from a variety of perspectives, on the use of digital media by members of parliament. This is justified, as the extensive use of digital media by representatives, both in electoral and non-electoral periods, and their systematic incorporation into representatives’ public communication strategies are evident to any careful observer of political elites. However, in the field of Internet and political studies, the use of digital media by political elites from subnational units has been little explored, with most of the articles published on the topic focusing on the national level. This process is unusual, considering the importance of such social networks for several political actors also on a subnational scale, where there is greater proximity of the elites with their audiences. Therefore, those elites are increasingly using these platforms as spaces for self-promotion, dissemination of narratives and interaction with their support bases (BARROS et 1 Sérgio Braga has a PhD Degree in Economic Development from IE - Unicamp. He is a professor of Political Science in the Graduate Program in Political Science (PPGCP) at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), and a CNPq level-2 productivity fellow. E-mail: sssbraga@gmail.com. 2 Diogo Tavares is a PhD candidate in Political Science at PPGCP-UFRP. E-mail: di_2712@hotmail.com. 3 Rafael Linhares Padilha is a PIBIT Scientific Initiation Fellow with CNPq. He is an undergraduate student in Social Sciences with emphasis in Political Science at UFPR. E-mail: rafaellinhares3030@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0003- 3415-844 4 Márcio Giovanni Macedo is a Master’s candidate in Political Science at PPGCP-UFPR. 5 This article was prepared under the research project “Political professionalization, digital technologies and the roles played by e-parliaments: a comparative study on Brazilian Legislative Assemblies and Chambers (2019-2023)”, funded by CNPq (CNPq Call 06/2019 - Research Productivity Scholarships, Process 311675/2019-0). We would like to thank the scholarship holders Maria Cristina Gomes Cassaro (PIBIC-UFPR), Hanna Marcon (PIBIT-UFPR), João Felipe Kahali (Araucaria Foundation-UFPR), and Mayara Gomes (voluntary researcher-UFPR), who helped in the data collection process for the preparation of this article, from June to September 2020.