III Global Summit on Disinformation 2023: Unmissable Lessons in Media Literacy

Disinformation is a contradiction in terms for the discipline of communication, regardless of the area of ​​specialization. Therefore, professionals in this field are ethically committed to combating it.

On September 27 and 28, I had the great professional pleasure of participating in the III Global Summit on Disinformation 2023, organized by the Inter-American Press Association, the Journalism Foundation (Bolivia), and the Desconfía Project (Argentina). The event was supported by the Google News Initiative, the International Fact-Checking Network, the U.S. Embassy in Argentina, the German Embassy in Bolivia, the United Nations in Argentina, BancoSol of Bolivia, and the Kimberly Green Center for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACC) at Florida International University (FIU).

I participated in this Summit because disinformation is one of the topics that, as a journalist, I am most professionally interested in. Therefore, I feel deeply committed to media literacy and have begun collaborating on this issue with institutions from around the world. In that regard, it gave me great satisfaction (and hope) to learn in depth about the work being done to combat disinformation by institutions such as: the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), Medianálisis, Bolivia Verifica, the National Press Association of Chile, the Gabo Foundation, DW Akademie, Infoveritas, the Colombian Association of Media (AMI), the Association of Argentine Journalistic Entities (ADEPA), and the United Nations in Bolivia.

Each of these entities, and the organizations that support them, represents a significant counterweight in combating a social problem for which we all share responsibility. It is paradoxical that our society, the more access it has to information, the worse informed it becomes due to the manipulation of information that sometimes occurs for various purposes.

Here are some of the ideas I would like to highlight from the Summit:

• There are important investigations underway that seek to expose who is driving and funding disinformation campaigns in the region. Three of these investigations are being carried out within the International Center for Journalists' (ICFJ) powerful program, "Disarming Disinformation."
• Disinformation in electoral processes (the case of Brazil was cited as one example) is being rigorously addressed. Silvio Waisbord, PhD in Sociology from the University of California and Professor of Journalism and Political Communication at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, spoke on the subject. Daniel Dessein (ADEPA) and Sérgio Lüdtke (Projeto Comprova) also joined the discussion, emphasizing the role of the media in providing reliable information to society.
• Ensuring news quality requires defining quality indicators and developing the necessary tools. This is the focus of work by organizations such as DFRLab, Trusting News, La Nación, and other institutions around the world, which are developing tools and implementing strategies to achieve this goal.
• Media literacy, especially for those most vulnerable to disinformation, must be a priority. I want to emphasize that educational systems bear a responsibility in this task because training our children and young people on how disinformation operates is essential if we want conscious and critical global citizens.
• There are several relevant media literacy projects that represent best practices. These include: Europa Press (automating disinformation monitoring with AI); the Google News Initiative, Content Authenticity Initiative, and Full Fact (AI tools to combat disinformation); innovative fact-checking projects developed in France, Switzerland, Ukraine, Argentina, Venezuela, and other countries; the “Digital Mercenaries” project of the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP); and the “Spread the Facts” initiative of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

I conclude by reiterating the importance of media literacy and the contribution that each person can make, starting with being a responsible media consumer and extending to actively denouncing pseudo-journalistic practices and other forms of disinformation that are currently being promoted.