Authors: Marta Comesana Rodriguez, Casilda Lopez de Uralde, Sara Carmen Jacinto Castillo, Amanda Perez
What is happening?
Biased information in our country is not a recent issue. It has always been part of Spanish media due to political or economic interest. However, after the Covid 19 and interstitial wars such as Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Palestina, we have been more conscious of this reality. These sensible topics have stood out because of the big amount of aggressive and false information published legally. The following studio, made in June 2022 by Statista.com, analyzed the “Percentage of the population that consumed fake news in different topics”, resulting in Covind 19 and politics on the podium. Fake news: consumo por temática informativa en España en 2022 | Statista
What is the reason for this?
In our modern technological world, our society has allowed influencers or other figures with some authority to publish information, in risk of being fake due to their lack of professional experience, which their audience is going to believe. In addition, social media and blogs are the second favorite media to be informed of actual news in Spain. Commonly, citizens do this to try to avoid ideological tendencies of spanish newspapers and television channels. People no longer believe in “independent periodism”. For example, Telecinco, was one of the most seen channels of Spanish TV. Yet, in 2022 their audience decreased on account of the rise of scepticism. As an impact, other media (even though there isn’t a popular believe that they are influenced by ideologies) have also suffer a decreased of their audience, this are: RTVE, ElDiario and LaSexta.
What are the consequences of this?
Firstly, Spanish citizens tried to actively avoid watching the news. This also created a segment of the population called “ninis” which have no interest and not trust (ni interés ni confianza translated to spanish). In the second place, those who are still interested often search for a second opinion. Different media have taken advantage of this by publishing sensationalist news with clickbait titles. Both situations created desinformation in the Spanish population, provoking a lack of knowledge and the risk to believe a false reality.
What does the government say?
The Spanish government is conscious of this issue, and of the need to fight fake news. In order to do that, it is believed that the most important thing is to coordinate technological business, civil society, fact checkers and academic institutions. As well as the importance of strategic information to fight against the construction of a fake narrative. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the segment of our government in charge of it. In their website we found information on legal actions that are being taken in the European Union Like the following: “The European Council of June 2018 entrusted the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the European Commission with the task of presenting, by December 2018, in cooperation with the Member States and in line with the European Council conclusions of March 2015, an Action Plan for a coordinated response against disinformation.This Action Plan was presented and approved at the European Council on 13-14 December 2018.” In this program, we can highlight the creation of the RAS (Rapid Alert System) in March 2019. The RAS includes national contact points and utilizes a specific technological infrastructure to effectively notify about disinformation campaigns. It facilitates instantaneous information exchange among Member States and the Union, ensuring coordinated efforts in monitoring networks for detecting disinformation. The system not only enables the tracking of disinformation campaigns but also supports the development of common responses when needed, enhancing collaboration between European partners.
In conclusion, I would make national campaigns informing the Spanish population about fake news issues. In social media, influencers could publish videos or other posts talking about this issue to make their young audience understand the situation and have the desire to acquire critical thinking.