Wikimedia+Libraries International Convention 2025/Programme/disnformation-knowledge-justice
Whose voices are (not) online? Unpacking disinformation from a knowledge justice perspective- MARIANA FOSSATTI
Time: 15:45-16:00
Room: Alfonso Reyes Auditorium
Abstract:
In this session I want to invite the audience to critically unpack the notions of disinformation and fact checking when it comes to bringing plural knowledges online, especially in the context of online violence towards marganalized communities.
This conversation is critical in the current digital ecosystem, if we understand disinformation online in a broader context of Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) against women, LGBTQI+ people and other oppressed groups. Disinformation is not only a binary between fact and non-fact, truth and untruth, a problem that we can correct simply with fact-checking. Disinformation is also a modality of violence which aims to reduce the participation of marganalized voices online through silence and discredit. TFGBV is often targeted at specially vulnerable groups, like human rights advocates, environmental defenders and women journalists, whose voices are particularly important in the online information ecosystem, because they create awareness about critical issues, from reproductive rights, to climate change. We also need to consider the rise (and hype) of AI and the ways in which machine based knowledge amplifies and simultaneously invisibilizes certain ways of knowing.
As wikimedians and librarians, we need to discuss this context of online violence and systemic oppression as a key aspect of disinformation, and our not only in ensuring content accuracy, but centrally, in knowledge justice.