Why Do We Need to Discuss and Find Parameters for “Information integrity”?
Nina Santos is director of Aláfia Lab, general coordinator of *disinformante and researcher at the National Institute of Science and Technology in Digital Democracy (INCT.DD) and at the Center d'Analyse et de Recherche Interdisciplinaires sur les Médias (Université Panthéon-Assas). This article was written by Santos especially for issue 106 of the WBO weekly newsletter, dated Mars 1st, 2024. To subscribe to the newsletter, enter your email in the field below.
The term “information integrity” has been increasingly used, especially by international organizations and now also by the Brazilian government. In 2023, at least four cooperation agreements between Brazil and other countries using this term were signed. In the context of Brazil presiding over the G20, this idea has gained even more prominence and has guided actions related to combating misinformation and hate speech, as well as defending the regulation of digital platforms and the construction of a “democratic” or “healthy digital space.”
All of this certainly is very positive, but the fact is that there is only academic literature in English on the idea of information integrity, which makes the theoretical and political construction of the term from a global perspective difficult.
Retracing the history of the term “information integrity"
The expression “information integrity” gains global notoriety especially after Policy Brief 8, published by the UN in June 2023. In this document, information integrity refers to the "accuracy, consistency and reliability of information. It is threatened by disinformation, misinformation and hate speech."
Just over a year earlier, in February 2022, the United Nations Development Program had published the document "Information Integrity: Forging a Pathway to Truth, Resilience and Trust,” in which it conceptualizes information integrity as being "determined by 'accuracy, consistency and reliability of content, processes and information systems to maintain a healthy information ecosystem'”.
Following the few references mentioned in documents from international organizations, it is clear that the idea of “information integrity” appears very close to attempts to protect communication ecosystems, especially in countries outside the Western axis. It must also be said that all the references used are not only from organizations located in the global north, but are also based on concrete examples and cases from these countries.
The problems with the term as-is:
It is necessary to emphasize focusing on space and flow, not unity.
The idea of "information integrity" and especially the translation "information integrity" can give the impression that the focus is on the unity of information, which would need to be complete. In other words, there would be a sender, producer of information, who would publish an informational unit that should be protected, maintained in full until its reception. An idea that is at odds with the communication scenario we have today.
Furthermore, the idea of information integrity may imply that the problem would be in delivering complete information to the citizen. In other words, upon receiving complete information, citizens would be able to fully exercise their citizenship. We need, however, to consider that reception can be problematic (as it often is), and this is also a communication problem. It is not enough for information to reach citizens in its entirety, it must make sense within a worldview. They are communication processes, but it is not just the integrity of the information that will be able to contain them.
A third point that needs to be discussed arises from the fact that it is necessary to consider that a large part of the problems in the current communication scenario are related to flows. The digital paths that information takes to reach citizens (especially those that go through digital platforms) now have intermediaries that did not exist in the previous communication model. Therefore, there are a series of problems that are not related to the information itself, but to the environment in which it circulates, which directly impacts its social effects. To draw a parallel, when we talk about election integrity, we are talking about “electoral integrity” and not “voting integrity.” It is the system that we think about, the social functioning that a sum of mechanisms has, and not the unity of the voter's decision.
Successive import of concepts and imaginaries from the global north
These problems in interpreting the term are accentuated by the most used translation in Portuguese: “integridade da informação” or “information integrity.” It has a much more unitary and less systemic meaning than the original in English. The fundamental problem is that, once again, we are importing an external concept without much discussion. This makes it difficult to choose a translation – and, therefore, a social meaning – since there is no understanding of what the term actually means.
Much of the discussion about the new communication scenario has been based on foreign terms that simply do not have an accurate translation into Portuguese. It was like this with fake news, which, as several authors have already highlighted, is not the same thing as “fake news.” It was also the same with the difference between “misinformation” and “disinformation,” which is impractical in Portuguese and which ended up putting everything in the “disinformation” category.
Now let us, once again, adopt a foreign term – and an imaginary one – simply trying to find a linguistic translation, without thinking about its real meaning. It is an idea with an embedded a vision of communication that does not address our problems.
2. The opportunity to build an informational agenda from the South
If Brazil consolidated its position of international leadership with the approval of the Marco Civil da Internet (Civilian Framework of the Internet0 and the holding of NetMundial in 2014, this year the possibilities are even greater. In 2024, a moment of Brazil's new international protagonism in which debates about information are at the center of the agenda, we have the opportunity to think about a Brazilian proposal for the world. It should be one that considers the reality of Brazil, Latin America, the BRICS, and the Global South, and uses this as input to formulate which parameters are actually important for us in the digital communication environment.
When we talk about communication and information in Brazil and in countries in the global South, we are often talking about realities largely dominated by commercial, hegemonic and extremely concentrated journalism. We are talking about many countries where communication via messaging apps is absolutely central. We are dealing with young and often unstable democracies. We are referring to societies with abysmal levels of social inequality, which impact the way people consume information. We are talking about countries where hate speech not only circulates, but also serves to reinforce historical oppressions, such as racism. We are dealing with countries heavily impacted by socio-environmental problems. And, with all necessary emphasis, we are talking about countries that are physically and imaginatively far from the headquarters of big techs, which successively treat these countries and their citizens as second class.
Our challenge is to bring to the world a proposal of innovative, creative and purposeful parameters of what we want from a democratic communication space.
