That the wars between countries today are as important as the so-called Infowars or information wars, that many people stopped believing in the traditional media and therefore turn to other platforms, that fake news proliferates in contexts of frustration of the population , that young people are less likely to fall into the trap of false news, that the reproduction of false news has political and economic purposes because social networks make money with their reproduction. That an important part of the population of Latin America cannot even be misinformed because connectivity is not guaranteed as a human right.
Those were some of the theses exposed in the zoom Infodemic and Public Communication, the role of the mediawhich took place this Friday with the exhibition and the debate that representatives of public media in Latin America in a call promoted by the Board of Directors of the Tal Network (Latin American Television) that brings together more than 150 public, cultural, cooperative, community, parliamentary and university channels in the region.
But the exhibitors were not only left with the diagnosis, description and concern generated by the infodemic and fake news for the world population, but there was also time dedicated to presenting proposals to combat the phenomenon.
Why and what for fake news
Each exhibitor had seven minutes to present their vision of the infodemic and false news and the Mexican began with his thesis Jenaro Villamil, president of the Tal Network.
“The political context in Latin America is veering to the left, but the media system that includes the mass and digital media has not changed, they are great reservoirs of the right against the processes of change”, he contextualized.
He then spoke of the importance that must be given to information wars or Infowars and his concern that disinformation content penetrates more easily than informative content.
He also referred to the intentional inclination of the media to affective communication understood as that which generates fear.
To its turn, Bernarda Llorente, president of Télam Agencyput the accent on the hate speech that contains false news, whose objective is to generate a certain state of mind in the people who consume it. But Llorente added an important nuance: fake news proliferates in times of frustration in society, they take advantage of the moods of what we call people. And he quoted Pope Francis, whom he recently interviewed exclusively for Télam agency.
“The Pope is in addition to a religious leader a social and political leader whose speech is dissonant compared to the general flat speech and recalled the four sins of communication that the Supreme Pontiff defines.
“Francisco talks about defindormation, slander, defamation and coprophilia,” he said.
Regarding hate speech, the president of Télam stressed that they have the objective “of marking the field, distorting the vision of politics and leading citizens to inaction.”
On behalf of Peru, Hugo Coya, writer and journalist, spoke. “Fake news has a political reason and an economic reason. Networks, for example, make money from spreading fake news and we are facing a culture of memecracy because there is disenchantment and low credibility of what the media reports,” he said.
To expose the Brazilian vision, Chico Marés, coordinator of the Lupa agency. With an example of what happened to vaccines during the pandemic, he demonstrated how fake news permeates.
“Before the pandemic, Brazilians’ confidence in vaccines was 90 percent. After the anti-vaccine campaign it dropped to 75 percent,” he explained.
The analogy he made with that data is worrying and important in view of the upcoming electoral process, which has Lula as the great favorite to dethrone Jair Bolsonaro. “They use methods to reduce confidence in the beliefs that they are going to try to use to pierce confidence in the electoral system.“.
Patricia Villegas, President of Latin American and Caribbean Multimedia teleSUR, conveyed her vision of public media in this region.
“The hegemonic media is going through a crisis of legitimacy. People don’t believe them, but they also say that the news turns too much to politics and covid, that the news is hopeless and that a solution is never offered,” he said. And she was convinced of the need to give “more participation to the audiences so that they can express their interests.”
Ana Maria Ruiz, from Colombiamade axis in the audiences of the youngest, said that they are less vulnerable to believe in fake news spoke of the need to pay attention to the metaverse and see how journalism enters there and left the question raised: What happens to the kids with the information?
The proposals
Protesting something without proposing a way to change it is pointless. So after exposing the problem, the participants said how they think the phenomenon of the infodemic and fake news can begin to change.
Llorente spoke that the output has to be collaborative and the need to increase the human right to connectivity in Latin Americafrom Mexico proposed that the Tal Network create a news verification system and that a fake news investigation department be created, there was talk of making co-productions in children’s audiences, of adding more good news to the convicted and of the need to educate children from an early age so that they are consumers less prone to deception.
It was a first meeting that will be followed by others, because the problem is big and complex, but from the public media in Latin America the initial kick was given.
