The e-book 'Infodemia' explains in a form of a dictionary, and with a lot of rigorous black comedy, the false and misleading news spread across Latin America and the rest of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.
UNESCO published two policy reports in Spanish to understand and respond to the 'infodemic': the disinformation pandemic about COVID-19 that has circulated at a speed impossible to control.
After a little more than eight months of preparation and arriving at agreements between organizations that support the new data verification initiative in the region, Uruguay has joined the fight against misinformation with the launch of fact-checking site Verificado.uy on July 22.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is being criticized after he posted false information about a journalist from newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo to his Twitter account.
One of Peru’s digital investigative journalism sites and its largest radio broadcasting company have teamed up to verify public discourse and share their findings across the country.
Seven Brazilian verification initiatives presented a letter with suggestions of concrete measures that the Superior Electoral Court (TSE, for its initials in Portuguese) can take to help them fight general disinformation related to the country's elections, whose second round happens on Oct. 28.
The year 2018 has posed several challenges for fact-checking initiatives in Brazil. In addition to general elections permeated by intense political polarization and the new weight of social networks in the dissemination of rumors, fact-checking professionals are also faced with the distrust of the public, still in doubt about the role of fact-checking in the Brazilian media environment.
In 2018 several Latin American countries will see presidential elections, and with them, the risk of widespread misinformation caused by fraudulent news. In Brazil, concern about the problem has moved public authorities, and within four months of the election, the Superior Electoral Court has made its first decision regarding the fight against fraudulent news in the electoral context.
Brazilian voters will have a robot helper to fight disinformation in this year's general elections. Her name is Fátima, a conversational bot that is being developed by the team at fact-checking site Aos Fatos in partnership with Facebook. Fátima’s launch is scheduled for June, in time for the October elections.
The fight against fake news will likely be a priority for several Brazilian governmental entities as the country faces national elections in the coming year. The National Congress, the Superior Electoral Court, Army and Federal Police have already stressed the importance of reducing fake news commonly disseminated on social networks in order to prevent negative influence on the contests for the president, governors, congressmen and senators.