Disinformation in Latin America

Politics in Latin America has always been rough-edged, combative, and passionate. It would therefore be a mistake to entirely blame the spread of social media and new emerging communications technologies for the observed increase in partisanship, political violence, and use of hate speech. A wide number of other deeply rooted and structural factors are clearly involved, including inequality, poverty, crime, corruption, and political systems which do not adequately represent the population. That said, it is also evident that some of the more negative aspects of political behaviour have become more harmful, precisely because there is now a bigger and more comprehensive toolkit for disinformation. In short, the new technologies may be allowing what used to be fairly small-scale and localised dirty tricks to become much more widely effective.