Rumor, disinformation, fear in digital media

Chiapas uncovered by Covid-19

Abstract

The following article presents results of the coverage that local digital newspapers gave to events that occurred in the state of Chiapas, such as, the hostile behavior directed towards health personnel in indigenous communities, the alleged existence of a werewolf or the march against Bill Gates, emerging from the circulation of rumors in socio digital networks during the Covid-19 pandemic. These events were presented as reasons to panic, where digitalized rumors had found context in verisimilitude, which reinforced the preexisting discourses in a collective memory and common sense. In this way, the purpose of the investigation is to understand the legitimation of digital scenarios as news media, without stopping to determine the credibility of these rumors. Due to the impossibility of doing a field investigation due to the quarantine, websites from eighteen newspapers were reviewed using key words for content analysis and three people from places close to the events were interviewed, evidencing the ways in which the rumors, misinformation, mistrust in the government, and conflicting speeches show the disadvantages which these communities are facing due to the pandemic, but also the practices which allow them to resist.