From mass manipulation on social networks to actions to combat disinformation

Abstract

In this text, I present a reflection about disinformation as a political-discursive strategy accepted, validated and disseminated as an “unquestionable” truth by groups in hypermedia. I question the educational, political and mediatic practice of combating disinformation with the dissemination of curated information and I compare the discursive masses with the bubbles in social networks, from a Freudian perspective of mass psychology (FREUD, 2011). Among the proposed discussions, I describe the main actions to combat disinformation established at global level, especially in Brazil, in recent years. I detail some checking agencies and socio-mediatic movements established and crossed by digital culture (CHAUÍ, 2017, 2021) that take into account critical literacy, to verify the facts and not consume disinformation, whether disseminating or producing false content. Finally, I reflect on the democratic potential of the internet and its relationship with discursive alterity in contrast to ambivalent movements of destitution of the other, strengthened by algorithms, which began to manage and standardize our subjectivities, creating predilections and consumption demands.