Workshop on the Impact of Algorithms on Online Information Pluralism

Our co-researcher Patricia Peña was invited by Observacom to take part in the workshop “Algorithms, News and Pluralism on Social Media”, organized by the Forum on Information and Democracy in Uruguay.

The workshop gave continuity to the regional consultation carried out in 2022 by this international agency based in France about information pluralism and the algorithms associated with the news that go viral on various social media platforms, their indexing and curation.

“This expert consultation workshop about the document ‘News and Information Pluralism in Indexing and Curation Algorithms’ is the result of a process that began last year with a consultation by the Forum on Information and Democracy, which groups various organizations, mostly from the Global South, that work on freedom, expression, right to communication and freedom of press issues to conduct an analysis and deliver recommendations on how to address, in regulatory terms but also in terms of recommendations to states, the increasingly strategic role they are having and where the algorithms of digital platforms that distribute news or newsworthy information are having an impact in various countries today,” said Peña.

The workshop also featured the participation of João Brant, digital policies secretary of the Brazilian Social Communication Secretariat, who commented on the scope of the document prepared by the Forum, its findings and recommendations.

“The document seeks to develop the concept of information pluralism in the context of these digital platforms, which are not characterized by being the creators of these information contents but rather by being distributors that position and profile how this content circulates. It is very important to understand these automated mechanisms because they mediate and moderate how we access and consume information today, and also understand that information bubbles and/or echo chambers are eventually created. In this sense, this work meeting presented once again the difficulties and challenges in Latin America for addressing these issues,” added the academic.

The purpose of the workshop was to generate a Latin American roadmap for addressing a regulatory agenda that guarantees information pluralism in digital media, in addition to showing their impact on the region’s societies and democracies.