MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — With the 2024 Mexican presidential election less than a year away, political analysts and academics warn of a wave of fake news and disinformation making the rounds on the internet, a trend they deem especially worrisome as some of the falsehoods seem to come from the party in power —and the president himself.
He points at a recent incident in which López Obrador and his supporters accused Xóchitl Gálvez, a presumptive opposition presidential hopeful at the time, of planning to end a host of popular social programs implemented by his government if she were to win the presidency.
Gálvez decried the president’s comments as false and in early June secured a judge’s order guaranteeing her right of reply and allowing her to respond in person at one of his daily morning press briefings.
Not long after, she formally entered the presidential race as a candidate of a broad opposition coalition — the historically leftist PRD, the conservative PAN and the PRI that ruled Mexico for 70 years.
In early June, false publications and a widespread campaign of disinformation plagued a local election in the northern state of Coahuila, with dozens of posts seeking to discredit Mexico’s electoral authority known as INE.
“The risk of disinformation in contexts of low democratic institutional strength, as is the case in Mexico and many other Latin American countries, is the impossibility of reaching an agreement between the different political groups,” said Guerrero.
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