Patricia Peña Examines the Links Between Disinformation, Brain and Social Media in Panel Discussion

In the context of the Printemps de l’esprit critique festival promoted by Universcience, academic Patricia Peña participated in the panel discussion “Disinformation: Influence of the Brain and Social Media” held last Tuesday, April 7th at Instituto Francés de Chile.

The activity gathered specialists from various disciplines to reflect on the contemporary challenges posed by disinformation in digital environments, tackling the phenomenon from the perspective of neuroscience, communication and artificial intelligence.

In addition to Peña, the panel featured Adrián Palacios Vargas, neuroscience researcher at Universidad de Valparaíso, and Nayat Sánchez-Pi, director of Inria Chile. The conversation was moderated by the psychologist Cynthia Canales Morales.

Disinformation, Brain and Digital Platforms

The discussion group placed an emphasis on how cognitive processes interact with digital platform algorithms, influencing the contents that people consume and share.

During the meeting, it was stressed that disinformation does not respond only to content verification failures but also to structural dynamics of the attention economy, in which emotional contents tend to become viral over evidence-based ones.

The impact of generative artificial intelligence on the production and circulation of information was also addressed, especially in the creation of highly realistic images, videos and audio that make identifying fake or manipulated contents more complex.

Contributions of Fondecyt Project 1230748

The participation of Patricia Peña allowed sharing the progress of the Fondecyt Project on Convergent Regulation, particularly regarding the analysis of disinformation from a digital governance perspective.

In this context, different internationally adopted regulatory strategies were discussed, as well as the role of institutions in generating regulatory frameworks for digital platforms. The covered approaches included self-regulation, co-regulation and state regulation mechanisms.

The recommendations of the Advisory Commission Against Disinformation, of which Peña was a member, were revisited, highlighting the importance of advancing public policies that allow dealing with this phenomenon in a comprehensive manner.