The tendency is that these projects gain more strength and visibility since they are promoted by the media vehicles with which they are associated and by the websites of these groups, as is the case with Globo’s Fato ou Fake in Brazil or the project linked to La Tercera in Chile. This is because fact checking implies a human, subjective analysis of content. Verifying what is true and what is not is not always easy, and the biases of fact checkers, as well as the frames of reference they use for content evaluation, can also vary. This brings into play differences in worldviews and editorial stances, as is also evident in communication vehicles: When fact checking is in media hands, there are always reservations of who does it, how, and with what parameters. It is something that we see as positive, the work that Animal Político in Mexico does, very exemplary work. This work by civil society is very important. Fact checking can encounter the same problems of bias depending on where it is done. Fact checking can encounter problems. (interview, Chorny, August 2021) 12.8 CHALLENGES RELATED TO MEDIA EDUCATION Various actors highlighted the relevance of the area of media education; however, they do not fail to recognize its challenges. Patrícia Blanco (interview, August 2021) says it is necessary to work with schools so that this type of training is incorporated in a comprehensive way: What we have realized is that the fight against misinformation needs to be incorporated all the time in schools in all subject areas. We thought about doing specific workshops on how to read the news. But this has a very limited place. It happens in one workshop or another. Sometimes there is confusion about where I put this if it is an elective, about which teacher would embrace the cause. 12.9 CHALLENGES RELATED TO RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION Another set of challenges that was postulated during the course of this study is related to different attitudes towards information, as already pointed out—whether there is a predisposition or not to consume and share certain messages regardless I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH of their veracity. This a very common attitude in polarized scenarios and in so-called “bubbles,” which are stimulated by the architectures of digital platforms. Juan Carlos Lara (interview, August 2021) from Derechos Digitales said: “It is difficult to pinpoint the causes that make a person circulate misinformation. There may be many factors that go beyond the field of disinformation. One has to deal with those issues.” Another challenge discussed was how actors can go beyond the audiences with whom they normally communicate, be it their followers, members, or people close to them by virtue of networks or affinities: “A big challenge is to break through the bubbles. Organizations have a more massive, more significant reach” (interview, Bordachar, August 2021). Among the actors who conduct research and produce information, various concerns were raised. One of them is access to information about the platforms to better understand how they work and how the circulation of One of concerns raised was content, including false content, ocaccess to information about curs. Adrián Pino (interview, August the platforms to better 2021), from the Argentinian entity Deunderstand how they work sconfio, is one of those who demand and how the circulation of better access to data: “It is necessary to open the API and data of the platcontent occurs. forms for research. We are having difficulty with some tools. It is necessary to talk to Twitter so that the API is easier to access. We don’t have access to that content, which ends up being proprietary on the platform. It should be more public.” João Guilherme dos Santos (interview, August 2021), from the Brazilian institute INCT.DD, highlights that this is key in the face of the opacity of the platforms and the restrictions that initiatives face when they try to obtain data: “We have access to very limited data. On Twitter one can see how many likes were given, but we don’t know how many people saw a certain post. We have no parameter to say that false information is seen more often and more engaged with, and this vitiates all the analyses.” In terms of research topics, the relevance of understanding not only the platforms but also the agents that create and disseminate false content was raised by the actors in this study. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the role of political authorities was strongly emphasized by several researchers and civil society organizations as an object of study, currently and in the future: Political authorities are a key point. If we can achieve more transparency, more controls, more accountability on the part of officials, I think that no matter how decentralized these controls Latin America and the Caribbean – 1 1 9