The ruthless forces of hate speech and polarized narratives foster confusion when attempting to identify what content is trustworthy in times when it is essential to acknowledge information as a right that belongs to all of us.
By María Rosa González
UNESCO's Regional Advisor for Communication and Information in Latin America and the Caribbean
The constant bombarding of different types of content—not always informative—to which we are exposed exacerbates the risk of confusion. It is a harmful threat, and now, more than ever, it is a dangerous one in the context of the pandemic. Misconceptions can be deceiving and lead us to make uninformed decisions, thinking that they are correct, oblivious to the fact that they are not. And that risk could be the difference between life and death. Since we are faced with a seemingly automated process of content consumption, we must conceive information as a common good, one that belongs to all of us.
We have entirely naturalized the right to healthcare, education, and decent housing, and it is precisely at that same level that we must place the right to information. Through information, we citizens exercise our sovereignty, develop our civic skills, and make democracy work well. Failure to prioritize this right can jeopardize the entire democratic system.
In the context of World Press Freedom Day, celebrated every May 3rd, UNESCO reinforces its commitment to defending this right. This year, the celebration is based on three critical aspects: protecting journalism and media feasibility, promoting the transparency of digital platforms, and promoting media literacy.
Journalism plays an irreplaceable social role in producing reliable, relevant, and public interest information. If media are not protected, if there are no feasibility conditions, the media can be seized and manipulated by other interests, causing the data they produce to lose its purpose and value as a common good. The new digital consumption models jeopardize investigative journalism, the migration of advertising to the digital environment, and the crisis brought about by the pandemic, causing many media outlets to close.
At the same time, the secrecy of digital platforms means that we do not know much of their inner workings, algorithms, business models, advertising policies and practices, or the origin and funding of harmful content. Many of these platforms have fostered disinformation and hate speech, triggering its spread at an unprecedented scale and rate.
These events are indeed far too complex, new, and challenging to be tackled by the platforms alone or by States alone. Therefore, they require close collaboration among all the stakeholders involved. The academic world, civil society, and the media themselves should engage in transparent governance mechanisms to shed light on these events and safeguard information as a common good.
Identifying the sources of information, unraveling the messages we interact with, and telling the difference between reliable information and manipulation have become complex tasks. These are new skills that we must expand to all of society through sustainable media and information literacy policies and strategies.
We are talking about a new kind of education process. People should be empowered to become more curious, more knowledgeable about their information needs, search, assess, compare, use, and contribute information and media content intelligently. We are talking about fostering a more profound commitment to critical thinking. We are talking about preserving a common good.
Because a better-informed society is a freer society.
This op-ed was written by Rosa González, UNESCO's Regional Communication and Information Advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean, and published by the Argentinian News Agency Télam, within the World Press Freedom Day context.
