INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR "ELECTIONS 2018: LATIN AMERICA IN ITS LABYRINTH" 3/5/2018 al 11/5/2018
The year 2018 was marked by presidential elections in three key countries in Latin America: the Republics of Colombia (May), Mexico (June) and Brazil (October).
In addition, in the first four-month period of 2018 there were also presidential and/or legislative elections in other countries, such as Costa Rica (February), El Salvador (March) and Paraguay (April).
For different reasons, these elections were decisive for the immediate future of the region, pending the crisis in Venezuela.
Polarization / Depolarization / Disinformation
Among the many factors that affect political campaigns, there is a crucial element that is transversal, and that has a very important impact on democratic dynamics, although with different local derivatives. It is about the strong polarization of debate and political options, with high personalism and the collapse of the central space (middle-ground), which is a central problem currently on the political development.
This polarization responds to different dynamics according to the countries, but they share a background that runs through all the western democracies: the discrediting of representative politics and the rise of populism, which proposes simple and often unique answers to multidimensional and complex problems. Faced with this reality, it is urgent to identify and promote discourses that build bridges and that drive depolarization logics.
In addition to the polarization of some elections, a disruptive and potentially dangerous factor has been added: misinformation, especially through the increasingly intensive use (and abuse) of the internet and social networks. They are spaces in which information is fragmented and tunnels of self-referential biased opinion are created, where dissent disappears and disqualification, hate speech and fierce propaganda proliferate. On the other hand, misinformation uses WhatsApp groups in an increasingly systematic way, although it is difficult to identify until it jumps to other open social networks.
The misinformation deepens the gap and accentuates polarization, to the detriment of the orderly and plural debate on programs and ideas that brings the due guarantees of truthfulness and contrasting nuances typical of advanced democracies.
This was especially decisive in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. They share the threat of online manipulations, of the use of bots and trolls and malicious infiltrations of fake news and highly toxic and distorting alternative events. All this to the service of unscrupulous propaganda operations, to which foreseeable attempts of foreign interference that act below the radar can be added (we have seen it in recent elections in the US, in France or in the referendums of the United Kingdom or in Catalonia).
In addition, although they are instruments increasingly used by all actors in the political spectrum, they are techniques especially required and used with opacity by the most extreme political elements of the ideological spectrum, radical nationalisms, localisms and personalisms, including the extreme right.
All these movements share, in addition, features of populism that are expressed in different ways, but that are distinguished by their great electoral traction in times of confusion and discredit of traditional political parties, many of them victims of high levels of systemic corruption and of the weakness of their leaders.
Two additional factors are especially worrisome. On the one hand, the extreme “right-wing” of the region, with preeminence of financial economics to the detriment of social rights. And, on the other, the religious factor, with evangelicals winning more and more elections by being able to channel with their salvation speeches the aspirations of redemption and frustrations of many, especially among the new fragile and indebted middle classes.
Given these worrisome trends for democracy, it is important to analyze them and highlight arguments in the public debate that contribute to reveal manipulative distortions, to highlight the polarization of speeches and positions as far as possible, and to point out misinformation, anti-democratic drifts and abuses that can be observed.
SPEAKERS
Rubén Ramírez (former Foreign Minister of Paraguay).
Carlos Pereira (Professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation).
Carlos Gervasoni (Professor at the Torcuato Di Tella University).
José Paradiso (Professor at the National University of Tres de Febrero).
Claudia Detsch (Director of Nueva Sociedad Foundation).
Francesc Badia i Dalmases (Director of Open Democracy).
Aníbal Jozami (President of the Foro del Sur Foundation).
Aníbal Jozami
Carlos Gervasoni
Felix Peña
Rubén Ramirez
Francesc Badia
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