Colombia – Social media become powerful tools for election propaganda in Colombia 

Location: Bogota – Colombia 

Language: Spanish
Duration: 00:05:28
Source: A24 

Restrictions: A24 clients
Dateline: 02/05/2022 

Storyline

Political counterparts have exploited the continued unregulated growth of social media platforms for their own propaganda in the upcoming presidential elections in Colombia where the virtual reality is turning the advertising industry upside down.

There is considerable concern about the role that social media, such as Meta and Twitter, play in promoting propaganda during campaigns of the elections due to be held on May 29th.

Between the two most likely candidates in Colombia, Meta would have been paid at least USD250,000 with carefully targeted ads.

Luisa  Isaza, a researcher at Green Lantern, said segment advertising is a valuable tool for generating more leads on social media whether the candidates are targeting a specific neighborhood or the whole country.

Despite the data transparency efforts offered by Meta through its open library, it is impossible to guarantee the legality of campaign financing.

Alejandro Barrios, the director of the Electoral Observation Mission, said Colombia has built a control system for the financing of political campaigns, elaborated in such a way that it does not work.

She added that the interactions generated from online advertising may well come from real citizens, bots, trolls and even external interests.

Shotlist

– SOUNDBITE SPANISH  LUISA ISAZA, RESEARCHER AT LINTERNA VERDE

“You can target a specific neighborhood or you can send propaganda to the whole country… segment advertising is a very efficient tool. It’s very good in that sense, very efficient, I mean. And they give so much… because it’s not expensive, they (Facebook ads) are giving a lot of that so good. So it is very easy to go under that intention that the law has to level the playing field for the candidates. That there is not one that is getting a lot of publicity and another that does not have the money”.

– SOUNDBITE SPANISH  LUISA ISAZA, RESEARCHER AT LINTERNA VERDE

“But we also know that more publicity does not necessarily mean a successful election. Because we saw that, for example, the candidate Francia Marquez invested very little, and still she was a revelation, she achieved good results.”

– SOUNDBITE SPANISH  LUISA ISAZA, RESEARCHER AT LINTERNA VERDE

“There are voids in the transparency of Facebook… I can buy advertising for another candidate, the party can buy it directly. It may be that the party knows it, it may be that I buy it without the party knowing it. That means that It’s very hard to keep track of ‘really how much money was spent on advertising by these candidates.’ So these numbers have these big question marks on them.”

– SOUNDBITE SPANISH LUISA ISAZA, RESEARCHER AT LINTERNA VERDE

“Meta advertising offers some very interesting things that in my opinion is understandable why it is so attractive to certain candidates.”

– SOUNDBITE IN SPANISH ALEJANDRA BARRIOS, NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF MOE (ELECTORAL OBSERVERS MISSION)

“One of the biggest problems that Colombian politics has is that the amount, origin and destination of electoral campaigns is a big black hole. Colombia is a country that is going through many conflicts because it has large territories with illegal economies. We are not only talking about drug trafficking, we are also talking about illegal mining, smuggling, human trafficking, deforestation, that is a large number of illegal economies that have the capacity to irrigate economic resources to many sectors.”

– SOUNDBITE IN SPANISH ALEJANDRA BARRIOS, NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF MOE (ELECTORAL OBSERVERS MISSION)

“Colombia has built a control system for the financing of political campaigns, elaborated in such a way that it does not work. What does that mean? That it is impossible to really know how much has been spent on a political campaign. It is impossible to know effectively where the resources come from. Whether they are legal or illegal. Licit or illicit. Because one can have licit resources within a campaign but they are illegal because they are prohibited by Colombian law for an electoral campaign. Therefore, illegal or legal, it is impossible to identify them, because our electoral authority is not strong enough to monitor the resources spent on the different campaigns.”

– SOUNDBITE IN SPANISH ALEJANDRA BARRIOS, NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF MOE (ELECTORAL OBSERVERS MISSION)

“Unfortunately, traditionally, the relationship between politics and legality is a relationship that has been woven through the illegal financing of campaigns through illegal resources that enter them and expenses that are not reported because another phenomenon that distorts Colombian politics is vote buying.”