“In search of the powerful enemy” is the result of a long investigation carried out by Dr. Óscar Jaramillo Castro, an academic from the School of Journalism of the Finis Terrae University, together with Dr. Guillermo Bustamante, from the Universidad de Los Andes. . This was published in the book “Scientific communication as a tool against disinformation in neoglobalization”, edited by María José Labrador and Claudia Reyes.
The objective of the investigation was to verify or reject the hypothesis of the existence of a “powerful enemy” who orchestrated, through social networks, political attacks in Chile during the Social Outbreak of 2019 and the Constitutional Convention. To answer this concern, 20 misinformation hashtags that were trending on Twitter in Chile between March and June 2022 were analyzed. The hashtags were downloaded from the Twitter API and analyzed using the Himelboim and Smith Method, to determine their network structures. .
Among the main results, the fact that the existence of “powerful enemies” behind the disinformation attacks stands out, but it was possible to verify that behind the disinformation hashtags are what were called “niche micro-influencers”.
“Through the Analysis of Social Networks (ARS) it was not possible to verify the existence of a ‘powerful enemy’ that was behind the generation of misinformation hashtags that were a trend on Twitter, in Chile. Disinformation does not arise from large opinion leaders who control or manage the flow of information, but rather from numerous micro-influencers. Each micro-influencer has its own audience, which is totally disconnected from the rest,” says Jaramillo.
“What is striking is that misinformation hashtags emerge simultaneously through the action of hundreds of micro-influencers who act under the banner of the same hashtag. However, those who spread their messages through social networks are their audiences, which are totally disconnected from each other and constitute true echo chambers”, explains Jaramillo.
The academic adds that “the name ‘niche microinfluencer’ is due to the fact that on average these influencers have an audience of 1,000 people or, in some cases, much less. In addition, it has a very low degree of interaction with the accounts or people who share its content, which is why, from the communicational point of view, it has audiences and not communities”.
