How to counter misinformation and hate speech online?
The Third Sector Roundtable warns that fake news discredits social organizations and the people they work for.
BarcelonaTo the prejudices pointed out by feminist women, immigrants, poor people, Roma people or the LGBTIQ community, we must add the impact of misinformation, the lies that spread like wildfire through virtual profiles. It is not that false information is a modern scenario, but in the last decade there has been "a turning point", starting with Brexit and the first elections in which Donald Trump won in the US.
The machinery of fake news It has become sophisticated and democratized thanks to tools like artificial intelligence, capable of sending manipulative messages with a fairly realistic semblance of reality. With this in mind, journalist Nereida Carrillo writes Social rights in times of disinformation, the new dossier from the Third Sector Roundtable, which was presented this Thursday in a discussion moderated by the deputy director of ARA, Ignasi Aragay, and which is part of the organization's strategy to combat hate.
Carrillo emphasizes the risks of disinformation in a society that lacks rigorous tools to counter malicious news, which are, she claims, a danger to democracy. "Disinformation is hate in the form of lies, one of the forms that hate speech takes," says the journalist, who is driving the project. Learn to check, which teaches how to distinguish false information from real information. The repetition of fake news It ends up affecting not only the quality of politics or social networks, but in recent years it has placed social rights in its sights and, consequently, "hinders" the work of entities, because a false discourse is created to undermine their reputation and also provokes distrust and violence against workers in this field, in addition to "increasing prejudices and this there is a will to "block social change".
Along these same lines, the president of the Roundtable, Xavier Trabado, warns that the ultimate goal of the current reactionary wave is "to break social cohesion" and "reduce the capacity of the State", and especially the welfare state. How to counteract this anti-rights discourse? With critical thinking, denouncing violations and avoiding disinformation as a political strategy.
From the 'cayuco' to the DANA
Examples of this impact can be found in the DANA (National Action Plan) of October 2024 in the Valencian Country, when, with the streets still turned into mud and deaths under the water, several far-right ideological profiles were activated to question the role of humanitarian organizations in helping the victims. One of the affected entities was the Red Cross, which during those tragic days received up to 7,000 daily interactions on social media, nothing like the 300 weekly ones in ordinary periods, according to Òscar Velasco, head of communications in Catalonia, who has placed the origin of this persecution in the image of its workers. canoes and in the false discourse that only newcomers are helped.influencers and jumps to launch "basic messages that go viral" and that even end up penetrating internally within the entities.
Migrants – especially young people and unaccompanied minors – along with the homeless, feminists or the LGBTIQ+ community are "dehumanized," notes Carrillo, who places them as a target of manipulated information, taken out of context, or simply lies. Romaisa Krima, a technician with the Entre Jóvenes project at FEPA, the federation for the emancipation of young people in care, denounces the "criminalization" of this group, who are labeled without evidence or rigor as "criminals" or "social parasites," forgetting that in reality "they are victims." Along the same lines, Giorgio Ossola, who had been on the streets for years and now works for Arrels, also complains that prejudice against the homeless is very serious and often leads to a reinforcement of victimization: "They cannot protect themselves."
Against this well-organized misinformation, Isabel Alcalde, a member of the Granollers-based mental health organization Daruma, appeals to "personal activism" to dismantle stigmas that, in these cases, not only directly affect the person suffering from a disorder, but also their family members and organizations. And Rubèn Sánchez, a specialist in the awareness-raising area of the Department of Equality and Feminism, admits that public administrations need to get involved in mounting a counterattack, perhaps also using humor, supported by Òscar Velasco.
