2023-08-12 21:19:36
In the Argentine public debate the facts order less and less: are not shared, do not always matter and depend on the opinion of the actors. Although this phenomenon grows globally with social networks, in Argentina it has a particularity: Institutional politics and certain media are great promoters of this post-factual debate.
The week prior to the PASO ended with the murder of Morena Dominguez in Lanus. An eleven-year-old girl who was going to school was attacked by two robbers. The event was dramatic enough for the different parties to suspend their campaign closures. And yet, just a few hours following the episode, the focus had already become divided: from the Lanús mayor’s office they assured that the murderers were two minors and it was clarified that one of them had been defended on public roads, several months ago, by the national deputy of Union for the Fatherland Natalia Zaracho (when he had been arrested and was beaten by police officers). A couple of hours later, the judicial investigation confirmed that the murderers were others, they were older and had already been arrested. It was also said that the version of the Lanús administration, of Together for ChangeIt was not in the court file. The few hours between one version and the other gave enough time for the debate in networks and media to be taken over by pointing out Zaracho, literally, as a necessary participant in the crime. Her closeness to Juan Grabois and her condition as a cartonera fostered stigmas. Even though in a few hours it was learned that the minor they had implicated was not, that day and the following one of the main trends on Twitter Argentina was to accuse her, under the stigma of “Fat”.
Several actors spread the version that Zaracho had to do with the murder and they were successful.. Some of them reached more than a million people. In certain cases it was regarding trolls established in the debate on networks in Argentina, in the spectrum of the right. They have many followers and manage to disqualify and remove political rivals from the public scene. But to believe that it was only those trolls who spread that version, and who supported it when it had already been denied, would be wrong. A political journalist from The nation He had said the same thing on Twitter, with a post that went viral and was still being shared. When several colleagues asked him to delete it or deny it, he replied that he had no reason to retract it, since that was the information when she published it. Different actors from institutional politics, grouped together in Together for Change or in La Libertad Avanza, also accused Zaracho of the murder. There was no retraction either, the tweets continued to go viral.
Voting is a matter of the unconscious
When the most read site in Argentina spread through its networks that those responsible for the murder were two majors, and no longer the minor whom Zaracho had defended, the repercussion was low: those posts were hardly shared. In a nod to clickbait, but with little care for the information, his account continued to spread that this minor had been arrested for the murder of Morena. A way of omitting the facts, but also a success: those posts continued to go viral.
Why is he trolling then? First, because it is effective: it generates great repercussions, moves and achieves wide dissemination. Also because it acts on previous prejudices and notions regarding the other that confirm the moral superiority of “us”. They are political operations that ruin the reputation of the rival. Second, in Argentina it is trolled because it is enabled and naturalized by institutional policy and by the media. The institutional policy rewards the notorious in networks and many times he uses as a guide what generates the most repercussion there. And it is known: the most visible practices in the networks are those of the most intense and radicalized. Of course, democracy implies divisions, disputes, differences, but you need to believe in the legitimacy of the adversary. At the same time, in the media there are no punishments for trolling either: several media figures, recognized as journalists, are more visible for their opinions or for the disqualification of certain political actors than for their informative work. In various media, the fight for informative rigor is less and less central: the framing and the newsworthiness of something depends on the attention and viralizationbut also which political sector benefits or harms.
Poisoning the debate to get certain players off the field seems like an effective strategy. To think of them as isolated situations is to miss the film: this is how the structure of current Argentine politics and the dynamics of its public debate are.
The truth was always a social agreement, unstable and fragile, on which certain things had happened. The opinion, the opinion or the conviction had moments where they assumed that there were facts. In this case things happened, there are video records and statements, but the facts are not central. Accusing a political adversary and making him co-responsible for a terrible crime generates more repercussions and is more politically effective.
What lies ahead makes it difficult to be optimistic, since all this was done without the need to create fake videos or montage photos. It was enough with an official gimmicky version that was very productive politically and that, when it was denied, generated very little incentive for anyone to retract it. What will it be like soon, when deepfakes are massive?
political scientist Conicet researcher and professor at the School of Politics and Government of the National University of San Martín. He has a PhD from the University of Buenos Aires and from the Sorbonne Nouvelle University.
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