society itself based on the new digital platforms that have changed the ways people behave towards content. Juan Carlos Lara (interview, August 2021) from Derechos Digitales argues in a similar vein about the importance of understanding how disinformation is related to social processes that go far beyond social media and the internet: “It is important to have a social understanding of the phenomenon that is not limited to the digital; it is expressed digitally but responds to deeper characteristics.” This multifaceted dimension was pointed out by several participants in this study. And as a consequence, there is not only one answer but rather multiple approaches to deal with the various aspects of the problem: The nature of the phenomenon manifests in different ways. It is not something that is concentrated in one point and that is solved there, and that’s it, it is solved. We are more used to looking for solutions in the digital. It is something that is reflected in the digital, driven by the digital, but it is something that is also spread by discourses in other media. (interview, Alimonti, August 2021) Alina Fernández (interview, August 2021), from CLACSO’s Political Economy of Communication Working Group, which brings together researchers from different countries in the region, raised the importance of observing the phenomenon from perspectives of differences in power and access to resources. These aspects distinguish the problem in the Global North from that in the Global South and in regions like Latin America and the Caribbean, marked by both inequalities in relation to richer countries and disparities between its nations: It’s critical to read the asymmetries. We are not all present in the digital landscape in the same way. What happens is not the same, nor are the strategies and weight of the actors in the public space to question these situations. The consumption [habits] of women, [of] economically vulnerable sectors, of [different] generations, with social markers of race and color and cultural belongings, are not the same. Juan Pablo Madrid (interview, August 2021), from Colombia’s FLIP, emphasized that an analysis of the problem must take into account these asymmetries, since the problem manifests differently in different places: I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH We have the challenge of centralism, and of understanding information flows in regions. We have a very universalizing stance but end up ignoring these other particularities in territories where there is insufficient access to the internet and information media, but where people do use social media. We have to think about information in local contexts and how to enter discussions with people who have particular projects and consume information locally. 12.2 THE REGION’S INTERNET ACCESS MODEL The challenge of dealing with restricted-access models is relevant to the region, as people in several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean rely on mobile access to the internet, limited to specific packages of data. The use of zero rating has implications for the practice of disinformation, as users are often allowed to access only social media, without the possibility of checking information on a website or resorting to any other source of information. 12.3 CITIZENS’ ATTITUDES TO DISINFORMATION João Guilherme dos Santos (interview, August 2021) from INCT.DD lists people’s attitudes as a great challenge in terms of understanding the phenomenon. For some, the choice of consuming and passing on misinformation is not related to a lack of knowledge about the veracity of that content, but to a lack of concern: There is little care also in differentiating between skepticism and cynicism in this debate. It is not a scenario in which skepticism is weighed— that she has no proof; can’t read the evidence; and therefore believes something that is demonstrably wrong. This is closer to cynicism— you don’t believe in something but, even so, you take it into consideration. If we understand that it is cynicism, there is no point in adding more information. 12.4 THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL NATURE OF THE PHENOMENON The representatives of Avaaz, an organization with projects around the world, highlighted that the fight Latin America and the Caribbean – 1 1 7