Document details

Working towards healthier information ecosystems: Collective visions from civil society in Latin America and the Caribbean

Engine Room (2024), 89 pp.

CC BY-NC-SA

Other editions: also published in Portuguese and Spanish

"[...] while information ecosystems encompass a variety of actors (including those within both private and public sectors), this research focuses primarily on civil society actors, including those who use information for their work (as consumers, producers, nodes, or facilitators of information), donors, organisers, activists from digital rights organisations, technologists for social justice and digital security experts, and researchers. In Part 1 of this report, we share an overview of some of the challenges and characteristics that shape the disequilibrium of information ecosystems in the region. In the Interlude, we outline the collective visions for healthy, strong information ecosystems that we gathered as the project developed. This fits in with one of our focus areas for this research, which is bolstering “communicative power” – defined by Fung and Cohen (2021) as the capacity for sustained joint (or collective) action, to associate and explore interests and ideas together with others, aiming to arrive at common understandings and advance common concerns in the public sphere. In Part 2, we share some inspiring strategies used by civil society to restore information ecosystems in the region. Rather than present these strategies as “silver bullets” or “definitive solutions”, the goal of this report is to indicate a variety of potential pathways for restoring information ecosystems and encourage funders, donors and other actors to support the work of those who are striving to materialise that restoration. Additionally, these strategies can also be a source of inspiration for the work that other civil society actors, technologists and digital rights advocates are building. With this in mind, the Conclusion summarises some of the main areas of support needed by actors working to improve information ecosystems in LAC." (Introduction, page 5)
Introduction, 4
Key highlights from this research -- Methodology -- Definitions
Part I. An ecosystem in disequilibrium, 17
Interlude: Imagining a healthy, strong, balanced information ecosystems for Latin America and the Caribbean, 45
Part II. Restoring information ecosystems: inspiration from civil society, 50
Conclusion: Ways to further support the restoration of information ecosystems, 75