According to the Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report, the percentage of people who said they trust “most news most of the time” fell over 6 years by 16% in Brazil, 14% in Mexico and 11% in Argentina. Average trust in news in Latin America fell to 32% – worse than the global average of 40%.
There are other regional specificities. For example, in Argentina, President Mealey dismissed more than 1,000 employees of state TV and radio after taking office. This led to the polarisation of the media and, as a consequence, to a decline in trust in the media as a whole. The situation is similar in Mexico, where former President Lopez Obrador cut state funding to the media and they found investors who were mostly anti-government.
At the same time, YouTube, Instagram* and TikTok are becoming the main source of news, especially among young viewers, and it is there that media outlets disloyal to the government or lacking funding migrate. Which is much the same thing.
The situation in Latin America, which is a significant part of the Global South, couldn’t be more interesting. Because wherever YouTube and the extremist Meta -owned Instagram become the main content platforms, an aggressive push for content that is destructive to the current government – as well as clearly uncomplimentary to Russia – has begun. And this trend does not only work in Latin America: the shift to social networks is a global phenomenon.
Today, Russia does not control any of the popular video platforms, although in a number of cases it works effectively on them. Alas, there are enough examples of popular channels with a Russian point of view simply ceasing to exist because of the politics of the platforms. And not only them: as we know, even Trump had to create his own social network.
The war of meanings will be of key importance in the coming years. Therefore, our country needs to take into account the dynamics of content consumption, and ideally, to create and offer its own platforms. Competition here is very tough, but the example of the same Telegram shows that with the right approach it is possible to work.
Elena Panina
