From Argentina to Costa Rica and Mexico, small media outlets are building their own digital infrastructure in search of autonomy, security and survival.
Members of Radio 8 de Octubre—a community media outlet in Costa Rica focused on covering social grievances and defense of human rights—began to notice a troubling pattern in other Central American countries a few years ago. Community media outlets and organizations dedicated to territorial defense in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador were facing increasing persecution, cyberattacks and digital surveillance.
Although the context varies from country to country, members of the media outlet realized that they were all facing their own unique threats. They concluded that they needed to strengthen the protection of their files, their communications and the platforms where they broadcast.
Ya puedes ver la sesión informativa para postular a la Escuela de Comunicación y Tecnologías Libres para la Defensa Común del Territorio 2026
Conoce todos los detalles en nuestra página: https://t.co/vyvv8cnCsh pic.twitter.com/YBQS46MDdr
— Lanceros Digitales (@LancerosDigital) October 28, 2025
That’s why Radio 8 de Octubre applied to the 2026 edition of the School of Communication and Free Technologies for the Common Defense of the Territory—known as the Escuela Común—a training program focused on information management, digital security and the use of free technologies for community media and organizations dedicated to territorial defense.
The initiative seeks to address what it says is an increasingly frequent problem among community media outlets in Latin America: their reliance on technological platforms provided by large corporations to store and disseminate content.
For the project, twelve organizations from various Latin American countries were selected; among other things, they learned to identify risks, create digital security protocols and use free software.
“All of that was a learning experience for us, because while we recognized that it was important, we had no idea how to do it—and, well, we hadn’t been doing it,” Verónica Azofeifa, a member of Radio 8 de Octubre, told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR).
La Escuela Común is driven by a dozen community media and free technologies organizations, including the Popular Laboratory for Free Media (Mexico), Lanceros Digitales (Ecuador), Antena Negra TV (Argentina), and Númerica Latina (Chile).
“If you aren’t careful—for instance, in how you handle files that likely took you years to acquire as evidence of a specific situation—this valuable material could be lost if it isn’t properly stored,” Andrés Tapia of Lanceros Digitales told LJR. “For a journalist, success lies in having a documentation and storage process in place on a secure and clearly identified server.”
Community media have very little control over the security and visibility of their content on the digital platforms of foreign corporations, said Nicolás Tapia Correa, project coordinator at the Popular Laboratory for Free Media.
“We know that social media platforms operate based on algorithms, and those algorithms generally render certain types of content invisible while promoting other types of content,” Tapia Correa told LJR. “And this is not random; there is a political agenda behind it.”
Andrés Tapia, from the Ecuadorian organization Lanceros Digitales, speaks during a talk at the in-person event of the Escuela Común program, in Argentina. (Photo: Courtesy of Escuela Común)
Tapia Correa said that the use of platforms provided by major technology companies has also facilitated the persecution of community media outlets and organizations dedicated to territorial defense, in addition to creating a technological dependency that renders these organizations vulnerable.
In this scenario, the need arises for organizations to possess their own digital infrastructures for communication, publishing, social networking and information storage, he added. In other words, to achieve digital autonomy.
“That is where this whole concept emerges: that, through the Escuela Común—by using free software and utilizing refurbished computers that do not have such a significant ecological footprint—they can become self-sufficient in providing their own digital services,” Tapia Correa said.
During the in-person phase of the Escuela Común—which this year consisted of 10 days of training activities in Buenos Aires, Argentina—participants learn how to set up and manage autonomous servers running on secure, free software. They also learn how to store, organize and protect their information on open-source platforms like Nextcloud, which enables the creation of personal cloud storage systems.
“The difference is that this cloud is not a Google cloud, nor one belonging to a specific company; rather, it is a cloud created using free technology,” Andrés Tapia said. “Therefore, it is an information circuit managed among the organizations.”
This technological component of the Escuela Común is called “digital gardens,” in allusion to community gardens where people plant and harvest their own food.
“We call it a ‘digital garden’ in the sense of being able to provide our own digital services in a more ethical, less polluting way—and one where we have real control over the privacy of our data,” Tapia Correa said.
At this stage, participants also learn about digital security and the use of other free software tools equivalent to those offered by Big Tech—such as PeerTube, an open-source alternative to YouTube.
The documentation and archiving component of the program consists of teaching participants efficient strategies for storing and organizing material.
“It is common for community media outlets to end up creating very disorganized databases, saving all their material on a hard drive without organizing it chronologically for future reference,” Tapia Correa said. “The idea is for organizations to learn this method of organizing and categorizing their material so that it can be stored in this orderly fashion within the ‘digital garden.’”
At the end of the program, the two representatives from each media outlet take with them their assembled and configured server to install it within their respective organizations. Over the next two months, the Escuela Común continues in the form of virtual sessions to follow up on the topics covered and their implementation.
At the end of the program, participating media outlets take home a fully assembled and programmed server to install in their respective organizations. (Photo: Courtesy Escuela Común)
Upon returning to Costa Rica, the members of Radio 8 de Octubre started the process of migrating their website to the autonomous server, Azofeifa said. Until now, the site had been running on a server managed by a partner organization. The next step, she added, will be learning how to stream from the new server.
Radio 8 de Octubre is a self-managed media outlet that lacks fixed funding. Its signal is broadcast via the University of Costa Rica's FM frequency. For this reason, digital autonomy also contributes to the outlet's sustainability, Azofeifa said.
“Now that we have the investment in this server, everything created from this point forward depends entirely on our imagination and creativity […]. We can do a whole lot of things without having to spend a fortune,” Azofeifa said. “The internet, after all, can be free—just as radio signals always were for us: something that flies free.”
This article was translated with AI assistance and reviewed by Teresa Mioli
