Nowadays, communication has become a strategic axis of politics and power. Hyperconnectivity and immediate access to infinite information have transformed the way we relate to reality and have modified the narratives that political actors construct to influence public opinion. Therefore, misinformation emerges as a powerful tool to shape perceptions, reinforce prejudices and manipulate behaviors.
Today the phenomenon of misinformation is showing us what capacity it has to penetrate and take root in the social and political fabric at unprecedented levels thanks to new technologies. Misinformation polarizes citizens, sows doubts and legitimizes agendas and postulates that could not otherwise be socially assumed. And to do this, disinformation tactics are used in order to erode trust in institutions and discredit opponents. Or what is the same: they have a strategy and clear and defined political objectives. Political language and discourse (the exclusive responsibility of political elites) has become a fertile ground for fallacies, lies and half-truths. In this regard, those who, in the exercise of conventional politics, promote media and political polarization with their irresponsibility should place themselves in the mirror of the serious consequences that misinformation is generating in society. Because in this way they are an active part of the political and media mechanism that aims to delegitimize the opponent and question, if not eliminate, the pillars and foundations of any democratic system that requires truthful information, simply, as Diego López Garrido says, because Democracies are founded on what is true, just as dictatorships are founded on what is false. Democracies and freedoms are nourished by politics while authoritarianism is based on anti-politics.
And it is in the context of misinformation and hoaxes that the figure of anti-politics emerges as a significant challenge for current democracies. The notion of antipolitics (not to go too deep) refers, as the Italian philosopher and sociologist Roberto Esposito says, to the rejection of traditional politics and a delegitimization of democratic institutions. And disinformation, as said before, is an essential tool in anti-politics that seeks to undermine the credibility of established political actors. In this sense, it is not excessive to insist that disinformation is not only an “information” problem, but a direct attack on the very essence of democracy.
In recent history we have clear examples of disinformation or blatant lies removed from genuinely democratic channels: the Brexit campaign, the statements of international Trumpism on emigration, the Cambridge Analytica case, conspiracy theories, the dissemination of messages about Dana in Valencia, etc. The rise and growth of disinformation suggests a “disinformation industry” with an economic and financial nature (no longer just political) that at the same time goes hand in hand with populism and penetrates current citizens with excessive ease, which shows that It is urgent to remedy this by complying with the
Media Freedom Law approved in the European Union, promoting critical thinking, implementing educational programs that teach young people to identify misinformation and hoaxes, creating in the written media (at least in them) a section dedicated exclusively to correct errors and retract previously published false news, explaining the errors and indicating how they can be avoided in the future (as proposed by parliamentarian Garikoitz Mujica). And reducing to zero the interests of large international corporations (in the arms and energy sector, for example) that mediate the truthful information that governments, political parties and related mass media offer us about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Without going any further. Because antipolitics is also exercised in government “policies.” But that is another question.
