how misinformation is increasingly becoming a protagonist

In the Bonaire parking lot there were not hundreds of deaths. Mateo was not killed by a North African. The Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was not a trans woman. And immigrants do not eat dogs and cats in Springfield (USA)

2024 has been marked, informatively, by hoax. A phenomenon that is not new, at all, but that this year has covered many of the most relevant and interesting issues with falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Not even a monumental tragedy like DANA on October 29, which left more than 220 dead, has been spared. the new conspiracy that some media spokespeople use to influence politically, gain prominence and obtain financial gain.

The reason is obvious. Researchers from several American universities have found that news containing misinformation provokes more moral outrage than news containing reliable information, and this facilitates the spread of misinformation. Furthermore, according to this recent study published in Science, people share fake news without reading it beforehand.

This is the breeding ground that facilitates the massive dissemination of content that, on some occasions, opens the door to xenophobic, sexist or homophobic speeches. It is already known, immigrants bring diseases, they obtain numerous public aid or there is more crime in Spain because of foreigners. Women also file false complaints of sexist violence against men (in reality, they are 0.001%) and the trans law allows “men” to rape women in public bathrooms and gyms.

And these attacks have direct consequences. In 2024, there will be an increase in the circulation of racist hoaxes in Europe compared to last yearaccording to reports from the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). For its part, the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Trans, Bisexuals, Intersex and more (FELGTBI+) reported a month ago that hate messages against the group have grown more than 130% on social networks while those of support.

After the crime in Mocejón (Toledo), which the networks attributed to an immigrant who later turned out to be a resident of the town born in Spain, the chief Hate Crimes prosecutor, Miguel Ángel Aguilar, proposed a reform of the Penal Code so that those convicted For hate crimes on the networks, they have to stay away from them for a while, in addition to being in favor of all their users having to be identified. These proposals, for the moment, have not been approved.

What the Council of Ministers did approve a few weeks ago was a modification of the law on the right to rectification to oblige “specially relevant” users on social networks (those who have more than 100,000 followers on a platform or more than 200,000 in all of them) are obliged to rectify the false information or news that they disseminate through these channels. “There are professionals of hoaxes and lies who every day muddy our public debate with lies and falsehoods,” defended the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños.

This initiative is part of the package of measures for democratic regeneration that the Government has been promoting this year, and which includes points such as the independence and transparency of the media or changes in the Institutional Advertising Law. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, said with these measures to seek the “strength of democracy” with a series of measures in favor of a “free” press to combat “hoaxes and misinformation.”

Fortunately, the ‘hoax’ about the death of the child Mateo in Mocejón did not cause serious altercations in Spain as there were in the United Kingdom on similar dates. A British minor of Rwandan parents murdered three girls and injured ten other people with a knife in Southport, a town located in the northwest of England. Hours after the incident, different racist protests broke out as information of little credibility spread through social networks and websites that the murderer was an illegal Muslim immigrant, that he was under surveillance for terrorism and that the authorities were protecting him. Specific information was even given about that suspect: his name was Ali Al Shakti, he was an immigrant who had requested asylum to live in the United Kingdom and arrived in the country by crossing the English Channel.

The hoax, which reached more than 15 million people through X or Instagram, It allowed far-right agitators to march through different cities, looting businesses, attacking Muslims or Asians and even trying to burn buildings where refugees were staying, such as a hotel near Rotherham that was attacked. More than 400 people were arrested for these incidents.

In Spain, the agitator Alvise Pérez said through his Telegram account that the residents of Mocejón had complained of numerous “robberies and rapes” since a group of menas were staying in a hotel very close to the town. Little more was needed than for anonymous users on social networks to urge citizens to take to the streets to repeat the spiral of violence that was experienced in England. There was open talk of killing Muslims and burning mosques. The climate of hatred began to be such that even the spokesperson for the family of the murdered child, Asell Sánchez, was insulted by these same profiles. by publicly asking that no ethnic group or group be singled out.

But something 2024 has shown is that the hoax strategy can be effective. Just look at the three MEPs and the almost 800,000 votes that The Party Was Over managed to gather in the European elections on June 9. Although some media outlets saw it as another example of the growth of the extreme right in Spain, different political scientists consulted by HuffPost pointed out that its expansion was due, above all, to the support of “very anti-political people, subscribed to hoaxes and conspiracy theories, and who believe in that ‘the worse, the better’.”

The DANA tragedy, for its part, has shown that We are also faced with organized and orchestrated disinformation, which goes beyond the particular interest of a group of people. Again, Behind it was the impulse to discredit the system, the institutions and the State itself, the main bases of our democracy. The slogan “Only the people save the people”, to which both the left and the right adhered, delved into this climate of anti-politics in order to generate a feeling of misgovernment and chaos.

From there it emerged that the Government was deceiving with the death toll (a conspiracy theory that remains in force two months after the tragedy) or that the floods were a consequence of the destruction of dams, something clearly false. In the background, likewise, the denial of the influence of climate change, which continues to be the main source of misinformation and a mantra embraced by political parties with great weight in the Congress of Deputies such as Vox.