Disinformation in Latin America

Over roughly the last ten years the ‘toolkit’ of techniques and technologies that are available to manipulate information, influence public opinion, and have an impact on elections had expanded alarmingly. The manipulation of information, particularly on social media, has become a ‘dark art’ seen as capable of undermining and eroding the foundations of democracy. The expansion of the toolkit, including component parts such as fake news, has been associated in the US with former president Donald Trump (2017-2021), who used these techniques to (successfully) fight the 2016 elections and to (unsuccessfully) claim electoral fraud in the 2020 US elections. However, at a global level Trump is by no means the only practitioner. Many other authoritarian politicians have adopted disinformation techniques. In Latin America they have often been populists of both left and right, as well as self-proclaimed outsiders. In fact, Trump may have learnt some of his techniques from an older generation of Latin American populists. In turn, many present-day Latin American leaders have looked to Trump as an example to emulate.