Authoritarian governments are intensifying their efforts to manipulate the information ecosystem around the world in order to undermine democratic institutions, promote their own interests and support their autocratic allies. In Latin American news spaces, authoritarian actors in the region are increasingly collaborating with their international allies, such as Russia and China, in order to amplify messages that are harmful to democratic institutions. In light of this collaboration, how should the community that supports democracy interpret these attacks? What adaptation mechanisms could civil society use to more effectively address these evolving challenges?
In the first essay Iria Puyosa argues that the collaboration between the Chinese and Russian governments with their authoritarian counterparts in Latin America, such as those in Venezuela and Cuba, is the factor that drives information manipulation in the region. By documenting key examples of coordination, the author highlights that the new pernicious information operations of authoritarian governments are characterized by the deepening of economic, political and military ties between those actors.
In the second essay Mariví Marín Vázquez explains the reasons why current actions to defend and guarantee the integrity of the information space are not sufficient in the face of the growing and well-funded challenge imposed by the information operations of authoritarian systems. The author proposes innovative and underutilized strategies, such as training journalists and researchers in the field of open source intelligence and attribution of information operations through the use of data, which can help civil society adapt to this challenge. increasingly sophisticated.