Ipso Facto: a Podcast to Fight Disinformation

Abstract

With globalization and the technological revolution, new digital platforms have been established which have unleashed innovative journalistic practices that enable new forms of communication. Thus, the news media landscape has changed dramatically over the past decades. Through digital sources, there has been a remarkable increase in the spread of journalism, social media, and public engagement. As of 2020, more than two-thirds of individuals in Spain were either reading or downloading online news, newspapers, or magazines. Compared to the previous year this constituted an increase of three percent. In general, young people are most likely to get their news through online sources, relying on mobile devices for their communications. According to the Pew Research center, in advanced and emerging economies, younger people are much more digitally connected than older generations. Individuals under 35 are more likely to own smartphones, use the internet, and use social media than those ages 50 and older. Younger age groups are also much more likely to use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify than older ones. Nonetheless, the digital world is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has shaped our reality, allowing people to gain knowledge, communicate, and save time in unprecedented ways. But, on the other hand, it has deteriorated the quality of information, media news, and education. The evolution of disinformation goes hand-by-hand with the digitalization of information. New digital forms have created room for new forms of communication with a global reach. Driven by foreign actors, citizen journalism, and the proliferation of talk radio and cable news, many information systems have become more polarized and controversial, and there has been a significant decline in public trust in traditional journalism. There is a global question about the quality of the information available to the general public and the impact of media. By the same token, misinformation has become a global phenomenon, triggered by individuals that take advantage of social and digital platforms to disseminate fake news. In Freedom House’s most recent report on global press freedoms, researchers found that ‘media freedom has been deteriorating around the world over the past decade. Even in some of the most influential democracies in the world, populist leaders have overseen concerted attempts to throttle the independence of the media sector. By the same token, disinformation has always been used as a weapon in conflicts to polarize society and increase ‘fear of the other’ in an already divided society. Consequently, it has several impacts on conflicts. It enhances tribalism, generates ambiguity and uncertainty in society, and can contribute to appeal for violence against a minority group.