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Education is a powerful tool to counteract disinformation, a phenomenon that has become a "cancer" for societies. In the face of the manipulation of information, a knowledgeable digital citizen is required to discern between the contents, experts said.
At the press conference?Does disinformation demand media literacy?, organized by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the United States Embassy in Mexico, Raúl Trejo Delarbre, researcher at the Institute for Social Research of this university, stated that the distortion of facts has been a deliberate practice throughout world history.
Along the same lines, Geysha González, director of operations at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), based in Washington, DC, explained that disinformation is the manipulation of information with the intention of blurring the line between what is reality and what is fiction.
Today, “aggressor actors are trying to push false narratives” that attempt to suppress that line, he said.
Adulteration is a political instrument, but the characteristic of today is that with the rise and global and multitudinous use of social-digital networks ?we are more exposed to the fabrication of falsehoods?. Unlike what we see in the media, the information that appears in them is de-hierarchized, jumbled, confusing and brief, Trejo Delarbre said.
The specialist in media and social-digital media, and member of the Institute for the Democratic Transition, the Mexican Association for the Right to Information and the Mexican Association of Communication Researchers, added that there are people who only learn about political and electoral issues through the networks; they do not read newspapers and their prejudices are reinforced.
In this regard, he said that, additionally, we are currently faced with the possibility that these digital tools, in addition to the lies told by political actors, contain false content created with generative artificial intelligence resources, which create videos, audios or texts.
"This way of deceiving people is just a way of distorting the public debate that is necessary in any democracy," he warned.
In light of this, he proposed that companies should label their content indelibly so that it is known whether each material is artificial or not. In addition, the role of the media is fundamental because "no one can assess or examine the content better than information professionals," he explained.
Raúl Trejo suggested that society at least try to discriminate between false and true content, and that each person ask themselves whether it is true or not before forwarding it.
Freedom of expression is sacred and must be inviolable, he said, but it does not exist if there are no guarantees from the State; and this requires plurality.
"There are governments that set themselves up as truth-tellers, and they want to tell society what is true and what is false. And here we face the risk that the biases that each one has will prevail and, instead of verifiers, we will have "pontiffs" of truth," he said.
For this reason, he insisted, we must encourage digital citizenship, without forgetting that there is no freedom that is absolute and does not require laws. The same applies to freedom of expression to protect the privacy and honorability of people against defamation, he concluded.
Returning to the use of the word, Geysha González explained that this phenomenon is a "cancer in our societies," which affects communication with each other, health (as occurred with the issue of vaccines during the pandemic), the way in which important issues are discussed, and "it separates us." Moreover, it does so effectively.
Social media, he recalled, is a business that is not based on true or false facts, but on how much time the public spends on them. Therefore, he considered, the most appropriate way to counter misinformation "is the individual."
In this regard, he mentioned that misinformation is like smoking: addictive; the world loves to know, click, follow; "but cigarettes cause cancer, and despite this, people decide to smoke."
As citizens concerned about democracy and the future, the most important thing should be individuals, who must verify the information, and seek the truth and the facts. "The citizen has the responsibility, and the power, to know the truth."
The most valuable thing about democratic societies is that no one can restrict freedom of expression; “you can say your opinion and express yourself.” In that sense, the solution is not to restrict it. Civil society and journalists, for example, can participate in verifying what is true, he stressed.
One in three people in the United States get their news information on TikTok. Each individual has a responsibility and needs the tools to identify it on social media, Gonzalez added.
Democracy is failing and losing in the global competition as to what is real and what is false; "we are not countering the falsehoods that are spreading in society." To achieve this, he reiterated, education is the most powerful tool.
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