Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores how digital imaginaries portray grassroots news production online as a ‘freeing’ practice that builds on blurring the lines between freedom and accountability. To do so, I compare how citizen media and the dissemination of fake news reimagine democratisation and expertise.

Paper Abstract:

In recent years, citizen media have gained prominence in Latin America through initiatives such as Brazil’s Mídia Ninja and Argentina’s La Vaca. By relinquishing the requirement for formal journalist credentials from their amateur collaborators/activists, these platforms become spaces for democratising media and opposing the corporate monopoly of information. Meanwhile, WhatsApp, X and Telegram have gained visibility as spaces for the dissemination of fake news, where ordinary citizens create content about ‘what mainstream media does not show.’ This paper aims to analyse: what do grassroots news production via citizen media and the dissemination of fake news have in common? When the terms and conditions of various social media draw on a digital imaginary that emphasises nearly unlimited free speech, who is/can be held accountable for what is said or done in these online spaces?

Drawing on online fieldwork with ordinary users of the aforementioned platforms in Brazil and Argentina, this paper focuses on the news produced around the presidential campaigns and governments of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil (2019-2023) and Javier Milei in Argentina (2023-present). I examine how freedom and accountability intersect in these content production practices, considering how political engagement, a rhetoric of democratisation and rejection of expertise underpin both citizen media and fake news.

Ultimately, my goal is to understand how such digital imaginaries minimise social media users’ responsibility while maximising their freedom to express themselves, also boosting from Musk’s and Trump’s quest for free speech to the anarcho-capitalist rhetoric of Milei and Bolsonaro.