The phenomenon of disinformation has leaked into all social layers of the American continent. Electoral processes show how false news or incorrect information, mixed with real information, run uncontrollably through social networks and platforms on-linewhich makes a successful confrontation against manipulation difficult.
The fight, agreed several experts who participated in the II Global Summit on Disinformation held this Thursday, is very uneven if one compares the torrent of distorted information and in some cases, very elaborate to pass it off as real, with the few efforts in Latin America to confront her.
Presentations by experts who lead efforts by the media, cooperation projects and, in some cases, advanced technologies that try to deal with the global problem, came to the virtual platform from different parts of the American continent.
“We are losing this battle,” warned Cristina Tardáguila, from the International Center for Journalists in Washington DC, who presented an ambitious three-year project, which includes key components to start working from the educational base in different countries of the region, with various attractive methodologies to weaken “the monster” that is behind the scenes of this phenomenon.
“The context is that there are those who they are there pushing that misinformation especially about electoral systems. We have seen it in the United States, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, democratic systems are under serious attack”, said the expert, with more than a decade of experience working on this problem.
For now, there are dozens of work projects to verify misleading news and content in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela; but at the end of each day, these teams, mostly journalists who have focused on combating misinformation; “They carry a heavy backpack,” said the specialist.
Because each journalist who works on these projects knows that at the end of the day and turning off the computer, they have barely touched an iota of the “lot of lies that are flowing on the Internet,” said Tardáguila.
Ricardo Trotti, from the Inter-American Press Association (SIP), noted that this trend of uncontrolled misinformation has supported -for the better- some concepts such as “the importance of the truth”, and resorts to self-criticism by pointing out that the lie “has been always in the media or they have fallen for the propagation of lies”, not only in authoritarian regimes, but also in democratic societies.
However, in the current context the phenomenon of misinformation has spilled over, Therefore, Trotti sees it as important that in view of this, a greater commitment to the truth is being generated from the editorial boards of the American continent, which in many cases have promoted alliances with others to verify content, or “own verification” projects. .
The moment is vital because “we are trying to win the trust lost in our audiences. The help of the verification systems is giving us access to that truth,” said Trotti, speaking at the event on behalf of the IAPA.
And Renán Estenssoro, from the Foundation for Journalism, in Bolivia, pointed out that the disinformation trend is in crescendo because it is no longer just about the hoaxes that a few years ago flowed on social networks and message chains, and that were easily identifiable as false, but behind these there are engines that “work on well-made products” to confuse the population and even trick traditional media.
At the bottom of the stream of misinformation, Estenssoro sees “excessive doses of intolerance that have even contaminated the media.”
Media Opportunity
During the thematic axes developed in this II summit organized by the IAPA, the Foundation for Journalism of Bolivia, and the Desconfía Project, of Argentina, also supported by the International University of Florida, emphasis was placed on the work of journalists in contexts depression.
If the electoral processes and the pandemic have generated the greatest volume of false or distorted information, the Polígrafo work team, the verification center within the El Mercurio newspaper, in Chile, can teach the continent lessons.
The editor Cecilia Derpich explained how from 2019 to 2022 Chileans have gone through a continuous process of shocks that began with the social outbursts and that led to continuous electoral processes, each year to the point of an attempt to change the Constitution of Chile.
Each electoral process, he reaffirmed, has been loaded with work in the face of avalanches of misinformation, and his team has barely kept up with relocating manipulated photographs, finding the origin of distorted opinions and even diving into documents to try to give concrete explanations for manipulations.
“If we talk about a process of high tension and misinformation, Chile is an example,” said Derpich, who explained that this work process has led to the “consolidation” of standards in the newsroom and has fostered reader confidence, by present data with sufficient formative content to dismantle incorrect information.
These three years have also served Chileans to develop methodologies and separate fake news into different boxes, which are estimated at 44% and the rest are products with false or distorted information.
The challenges are not minor because there is a “high flow of misinformation on social networks and tracking misinformation takes time, there is also a lack of public information” to counteract it, explained the director of Polígrafo; this despite the fact that Chile has an ecosystem of open freedom for journalists.
For her part, Natalia Leal, executive director of the LUPA Agency in Brazil, commented that if one could speak of moderate success in the fight against disinformation, it is because her team has had to make many adjustments along the way.
The electoral process that culminated in the election of Luiz Inácio Lula, on October 30, presented an opportunity to develop solid strategies and, best of all, foster alliances with the media to verify “and refute” with the same force through the channels where disinformation flows.
The project has managed to consolidate robust numbers of followers and content consumers on social networks: 197 million followers on Facebook, 440,000 on Instagram, 216 million on Twitter, plus the multiplier effect from users who share verifications.
But the physical and emotional cost of the team to deal with misinformation has been high, to the point of having to simultaneously develop “clinics” with experts in occupational health and human resources due to the anxiety generated by being on that battle line. .
Natalia Leal says that the “mental health of the team, coverage with analysis and impact” became a priority and led to “support even looking for personal concerns” to redefine the tasks “we had individual talks with specialists,” she said.
Similar examples can be seen in other countries in the region, which, when assessing the path taken, view the opportunity it offers the media to regain confidence in audiences and in the general public to be well informed as positive, but do not lose the perspective that the road is long and uneven.
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