For four months, FGV Comunicação monitored what was published on 655 local, regional and community Instagram profiles to identify which topics appear most and which manage to mobilize the public in different parts of the state of Rio de Janeiro. The exclusive survey, carried out at the request of g1, analyzed publications between May 1st and August 31st, 2026 and drew a map of the digital public debate in five regions of Rio de Janeiro.
The result highlights two themes at the center of this conversation: health and safety. The two appear at the top of the ranking of interactions in all regions analyzed.
Security leads in Rio de Janeiro and the Metropolitan Region, with 16.2% of interactions, and in the Lagos Region, with 19.9%. Health occupies the first position in the North of Fluminense (16.4%), in the Mountain Region (21.4%) and in the South and Costa Verde (19%).
Although the two themes concentrate the greatest mobilization across the state, leadership changes from region to region, revealing important differences in the dynamics of the digital public debate during the beginning of the electoral campaign.
"What is talked about on these Instagram pages are things that are linked to people's daily lives, their daily lives. And these themes linked to health and safety stood out.", explained the professor at FGV's School of Communication, Victor Piaia, responsible for the research.
In the coming days, g1 will show in detail how the digital debate takes place in each of the 5 regions of the state analyzed by FGV.
Safety and health dominate in Grande Rio
The Metropolitan Region concentrated just over 101 thousand publications on the nine topics of public interest monitored by the research.
Security accounted for 16.2% of interactions, while health came in second, with 15.3%. The difference between the two themes is less than 1 percentage point.
When the analysis considers the number of publications, however, the distance between the two subjects increases.
Security corresponded to 20.3% of posts in the region, while health appears with a smaller share. Even so, health content was able to generate a level of interaction very close to that recorded by security.
The result shows, in Greater Rio, how the frequency with which a subject appears on the pages does not necessarily determine the size of the mobilization it provokes.
FGV's methodology considers engagement — formed by interactions associated with publications — as the main indicator of a topic's ability to mobilize public attention and participation. The volume of posts serves as a complementary measure of the recurrence of that topic on the pages' agenda.
"Security, obviously, appears through a series of publications that talk about robberies, assaults, homicides that share some types of news and that are related to public security, but also covers episodes of violence, such as fights, issues that are less related to public security from a macro point of view", explained the expert.
"Health appears both in public policies, and in new beds, vaccination campaigns, that is, public utility services (...). It also appears when talking about suspected diseases, especially infectious diseases. So news like these circulate with great intensity", he pointed out.
The Metropolitan Region is the largest territorial section analyzed by FGV and also concentrates the largest volume of publications in the study. The survey gathered data from 17 municipalities, including Rio de Janeiro, São Gonçalo, Duque de Caxias, Niterói, Nova Iguaçu and São João de Meriti.
Capital concentrates almost 40% of interactions
Within the section that brings together the capital and the Metropolitan Region, Rio de Janeiro concentrates 39.7% of all interactions recorded in the monitored topics. São Gonçalo comes next, with 11.4%, Duque de Caxias has 10% and Niterói, 9.8%.
The distribution also shows differences within the capital itself. Among the profiles of neighborhoods and areas of the city, Bangu accounts for 13% of the total engagement monitored in the municipality, followed by Ilha do Governador and general profiles of the South Zone, both with 9.1%. Jacarepaguá appears with 6.2% and Alemão, with 5.8%.
Housing and economy on the sidelines of the debate
Two themes directly linked to the population's daily life and pockets appear among those that least mobilize the local pages analyzed by FGV: housing and economy.
The subject of housing generated the least interactions in all five regions of the state, while economics had a reduced share in both the volume of publications and engagement.
In the Housing category, which brings together content on housing policies, rental prices and housing deficit, participation in interactions was 0.2% in the Metropolitan Region, in the Lagos Region and in the South and Costa Verde. In the Mountain Region and North of Rio de Janeiro, the percentage was even lower: 0.1%.
"It was a bit of a surprise, because we thought it would appear. It's because it is in fact a relevant problem in the Brazilian urban context, but here in the state of Rio de Janeiro this issue didn't have that much impact, especially compared to the major themes, health and safety", commented Victor.
Economy also appears with low presence on monitored pages. The highest percentage of publications on the topic was recorded in Norte Fluminense, but it corresponded to only 1.7% of posts in the region.
In the Lagos Region and in the South and Costa Verde, the index was 1.1%. In the Mountain Region, 1%. And in Rio and the Metropolitan Region, just 0.6%.
Among the content classified as economics are subjects such as gasoline prices, inflation and unemployment, topics directly related to the cost of living and the financial situation of the population.
The low volume of publications is accompanied by a relatively small mobilization. Economy accounted for 2.6% of interactions in the Serrana Region and the South and Costa Verde, 2.4% in the Lagos Region, 1.2% in Rio and the Metropolitan Region and just 0.5% in the North of Fluminense.
How the survey was carried out
FGV Comunicação identified 655 Instagram profiles with regional, local or community activity, based on a scan that covered all municipalities in the state.
Pages dedicated to news, events, records, complaints, public information and other content related to daily life in the territories were prioritized.
The publications were classified into nine thematic axes. The rules developed helped to identify, based on the terms and contexts present in the posts, content related to each subject. The nine themes were: security, education, environment, health, mobility and transport, culture and leisure, housing, urban infrastructure and economy.
The analysis was divided into five territorial sections:
Rio de Janeiro and Metropolitan Region;
North Fluminense;
Mountain Region;
Lakes Region;
South and Costa Verde.
The methodology allows us to compare not only the frequency with which subjects appear, but also the level of interaction caused by them in each territory.
The result is a portrait of the digital public debate on the pages monitored between May and August, in a state that is beginning to enter the most intense phase of the electoral dispute.
In the coming days, g1 will detail the results of the survey in each of the state's regions, showing which issues most mobilize local audiences and how digital agendas change from one territory to another.
