A few days before an election, a message arrives in a family WhatsApp group. The text claims that marked ballots have already been detected, cites alleged “inside sources,” and attaches an image resembling an electoral record. No one signs the information. No recognizable media outlet appears. Yet the message circulates, sparks outrage, and spreads before the electoral authority can refute it.
The scene illustrates an increasingly common phenomenon in Latin America and the Caribbean. The region has never had so many opportunities to access information, participate in public debate, and express itself. But it has also never been so difficult to build a public conversation based on verifiable information.
More than simply becoming digital, the public sphere has become “platformized.” The advance of digital platforms and artificial intelligence has expanded access to information, but it has also transformed who speaks, how content circulates, which messages gain visibility, and how quickly opinions are formed. An increasing share of public debate now takes place on private platforms governed by algorithms and business models that prioritize attention over the public interest. The public sphere has become more fragmented, personalized, and automated.
This change has profound implications for democracy, as shown by the recently published 2026 UNDP Report on Democracy and Development. Democracy requires minimum conditions for people to form their own judgments, compare information, hear different positions, and accept collective decisions, even when they do not align with their preferences. When these conditions are weakened, so too is the capacity to deliberate and build trust.
Although this is a global phenomenon, in Latin America and the Caribbean, the rapid advance of artificial intelligence and disinformation has the potential to accelerate vulnerabilities that the region has already faced for decades: low institutional trust, high polarization, deep inequalities, and a weakened information ecosystem. Technology does not create these divisions. It amplifies them.
For decades, the information ecosystem was organized primarily around recognizable media outlets and identifiable journalists. This ecosystem was never perfect. The region experienced media concentration, editorial biases, and the influence of political and economic power. However, it offered relatively stable mechanisms for verifying information and demanding accountability. Today, that model has lost its centrality and is also facing a sustained decline in trust. According to Latinobarómetro, trust in the print press fell from 45% in 2006 to 38% in 2024. For television, it fell from 63% to 41%, and for radio from 69% to 44%.
Disinformation contributes to this erosion because it makes it more difficult to distinguish between verifiable information and manipulated content. Disinformation is not a new phenomenon. What has changed is the speed, scale, and low cost at which it can now be produced and disseminated. A false narrative can continue to circulate even after it has been debunked when it confirms political identities or fuels pre-existing suspicions.
In the region, 76% of the population believes that false information circulates on social media. In Uruguay, that perception reaches 87%, in Chile 84%, and in Brazil, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic 83%. Yet the region faces a paradox. Although most people say they distrust social media, more than 60% use it as their main source of news. We are increasingly getting our information from spaces we distrust.
The consequences go far beyond the information ecosystem. When a common evidentiary basis disappears and public conversation comes to rely on fragmented perceptions of reality, one of the fundamental resources of any democracy also deteriorates: trust. Trust in information, institutions, and the legitimacy of collective decisions are all part of the same ecosystem. When one erodes, the others also become more fragile.
Elections make this fragility visible. Disinformation does not need to alter the vote count to affect democracy. It is enough to sow doubts about the process before there is even a result. Suspicion can be as damaging as manipulation because it erodes acceptance of the shared rules on which every democracy rests.
Protecting the conditions for public debate ultimately means protecting democracies’ ability to process their disagreements. Democracy does not depend on the disappearance of conflict. It depends on the existence of a shared space in which to process it. Safeguarding that space is not the responsibility of a single actor. It requires strengthening the democratic ecosystem as a whole: independent journalism capable of verifying, contextualizing, and investigating; more transparent and accountable platforms; citizens with greater media and digital literacy; and institutions capable of building trust. The challenge is not to control public conversation, but to ensure that it remains free, pluralistic, and informed.
This article presents an excerpt from the Report on Democracy and Development, titled “Democracies Under Pressure: Reimagining the Futures of Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean 2026”, prepared by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Autor
Policy Specialist at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for Latin America and the Caribbean.
