Page 15 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, OCTUBRE 2021 (English)

with 70 percent. Behind are the Argentines and Mexicans, with 66 percent, and finally the Brazilians, with 62 percent.
The investigation also showed that 16 percent of those consulted are completely unaware of this term, an aspect in which Peruvians also stand out, with 47 percent. In contrast, those who are most familiar with this expression, fake news, are Brazilians, with only two percent saying they ignore what fake news is.
Not All That Shine is Gold
“On the internet, not everything we see is what it really is. In the dark depths of the sea, a huge mass of ice can hide, capable of sinking our ship with a single blow if we only believe in what is in plain sight: the tip of it. On the internet, this tip can be false news, a birthday email with a malicious link, an attractive offer that arrives as SMS to our smartphone, or an image that we spread around our office; things that can be seen as innocent, but that by being naive could cause enormous damage to us and to our environment ”, explains Dmitry Bestuzhev, director of the Research and Analysis Team for Latin America at Kaspersky.
He details that with respect to those who most trust the content that circulates on the Internet, women in the Region surpass men, with 49 percent versus 42 percent. In this context, Peruvians lead with 63 percent, followed by Colombians and Mexicans, with 47 percent, and Argentines and Brazilians, with 45 percent. The most suspicious in this regard are Chileans, with 42 percent of the preferences.
The study also found that, on average, a third of Latin Americans use only social networks to inform themselves on a daily basis and only 17 percent do so through the websites of traditional media. Those who use the networks to a greater extent for this purpose are Mexicans, with 35 percent, followed by Brazilians 33 percent and Chileans, 32 percent. Further back are Peruvians 31 percent; Argentines 28 percent and Colombians 26 percent.
Fakecracy
In the book “Fakecracia, Memes y Dioses en América Latina”,(Fakecracy, Memes and Gods in Latin America), written by Omar Rincon and Matias Ponce, it is established that the use of false news in electoral campaigns is one of the roots of misinformation and of the serious problems that affect Latin America.
The power of fake news works so that voters don’t really know who they are voting for. One of the authors, Matias Ponce, who is a Doctor in Political Communication from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain; the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Holland and Director of Communications of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, points out that: “When putting the magnifying glass on Latin America, all the political campaigns that we have studied had a common factor: the use of fake news. For example, we can find Nayib Bukele in El Salvador; Bolsonaro in Brazil or Lopez Obrador in Mexico. In this way, Fakeracia begins to undermine the weak democracies of the Region. The use of fake news becomes a powerful tool to cover the real problems that threaten Latin Americans such as poverty, inequality, insecurity, among others.”
He adds that, however, the negative impact of fake news has gone further. Behind the use of this category of news, political actors are hiding their real intentions: an agenda that seeks to attack certain specific groups of the population.
Behind it are the human rights violations that occur through fake news. “But why do these human rights violations have rapid growth potential? Because through the use of false news disseminated by social networks, and through the use of bots (robots that are computer programs that simulate human behaviour on the Internet), they disseminate data at an enormous speed.
The book shows different examples to understand how political actors in Latin America use fake news through WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The author adds that: “The use of false news in electoral campaigns is one of the roots of misinformation and of the serious problems that affect Latin America. If the political campaign is guided by fake news, we as a society lose the opportunity to compare the political offer based on a programmatic debate (of ideas and not of patronage).
It is proven, not only in Latin America, but in any part of the world, that the factor of manipulation of public opinion through fake news has brought situations in which a representative is elected who did not necessarily win by way of the truthful and accurate information ”, explained Luis Ángel Hurtado Razo, research professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, specialist in the phenomenon of fake news and author of the book “Fake News: The
Silent Enemy ”.
In contrast, Enrique Núñez Mussa, an expert in fake news and general editor of Factchecking.cl, nitiative to verify news linked to the Catholic University of Chile, said that “it is still necessary to have more convincing scientific evidence” to analyze the impact of the false news in the Latin American elections, and that there is not “sufficient evidence to affirm that the victory or defeat of a certain candidate is due to these campaigns.”
The Bots and their Political Motivation
However, and although social platforms such as Facebook or Twitter began to apply methods to verify the information and accounts of real users, in digital networks there are still tools used for political reasons, such as, for example, the aforementioned bots that are programs computer scientists who use Artificial Intelligence to perform automated tasks on the internet as if it were a person.
“These armies of bots or automated accounts continue to function in digital partner networks because they certainly have a very strong effect and they continue to do so. It is the dispute over the open digital space in public opinion on the internet ”, Hurtado Razo warned.
“There is still a lot of work to be done at the regulatory level regarding intentional disinformation, for example, about campaigns articulated with bots for political purposes, both with respect to social platforms and also about those who generate these campaigns,” said Núñez Mussa.
The so-called “fact checkers” - or journalists specialized in verification - are playing a very important role in the battle against fake news. In view of the fact that fake news cannot be totally ended, the general editor of Factchecking.cl classifies fake news as “fires” and says that communications professionals are like “firefighters”. “As long as we have more preventive measures, education and tools to lessen its effects (of fake news), the easier it will be to control the problem. In that sense, the role of the ‘fact checkers’ is to be like the firefighters of the ecosystem ”, added Núñez Mussa.
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