That is the main conclusion of a qualitative study presented at the UCA yesterday.
The study of the practices, tactics and strategies that intentionally cause doubt, confusion or ignorance in the population is known as agnotology.
The term was coined in 2008 by Stanford University Professor Robert Proctor and featured in the book “Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance.” Twelve years later, El Salvador has the first agnotological study in Central America entitled “Agnotology and Pandemic: A Case Study on Agnotological Practices in Response to COVID 19 by the Government of El Salvador”.
The research, conducted by Herman Duarte as part of his specialization in human rights at the London School of Economics (LSE), concludes that “the government of El Salvador is engaged in agnotological practices, and these practices violate human rights”.
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To reach this conclusion, Duarte downloaded and classified 12,741 posts on Twitter and Facebook from the official accounts of President Nayib Bukele, Presidential House and the Department of Health published between March 1 and July 1. He then made an analysis of thematic, discourse and semiotic content.
The study aimed to identify the strategies that harm “the production of knowledge and the way it affects the inhabitants in various dimensions, starting with the right to a clear, unmanipulated view of reality.”
Misrepresentation
The analysis allowed Duarte to identify three main themes and four types of agnotological strategies in the Twitter and Facebook posts.
In this context, the government of El Salvador relies on the following strategies: secrecy; the use of faith; actions that could be envisaged as part of the “tobacco strategy”; and misinformation. The so-called “tobacco strategy” are the practices that the tobacco industry has employed in the last decades of the 20th century to cast doubt on the fact that smoking is harmful to health. These include: the misrepresentation of scientific studies, the funding of favorable studies, and the discrediting or attacking of critics.
Those strategies have also been used by the government, according to Duarte. An example of this was what happened when thousands of Salvadorans were sent to so-called containment centers after returning to the country or for not respecting the strict quarantine set by the executive branch. Some were deprived of their liberty for 40 days or more.
On March 14, President Bukele tweeted: “Most of the people in quarantine are already in shelters with excellent conditions …”. After several protests three days later, the president added, “Most people are quarantined in hotel rooms, paid by the government at a special price.”
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On April 17, with several Constitutional Chamber resolutions, the president tweeted, “Does anyone think we want to keep them in a four-star hotel for sports? No, some are potentially positive cases. Others are positive links. If you let them out, the virus will be spread ”.
That day a woman begged her freedom from a hotel window. She held a sign saying she was going mad after 39 days of detention and 3 negative COVID-19 tests. On May 10, a group of mariachis stood in front of that building singing to the imprisoned mothers. The study notes, “These photos were published (and deleted) in the official account of the government communications secretariat. Why don’t you release them? The incubation period has already been far exceeded, as there have been cases of 50 days in captivity ”.
“I hope that Nelson Mandela’s spirit of harmony and reconciliation will inspire his actions, that the wisdom of his father, Don Armando Bukele, will guide him in making decisions; and that he will never forget the moral and constitutional calling that he must have to be an instrument. peace and social harmony. He is still in time to regain the energy and mysticism with which he started his reign, which was lost on February 9th. “
The previous tweets and the mariachi’s image of the containment center, which Duarte considers “surreal”, make him wonder: are the containment centers a punishment or a demonstration of “hard love”?
Then he himself answers: “Although a professor at the American University practically denied the occurrence of human rights violations (Schamis & Chirinos, 2020), the decisions of the Constitutional Chamber tell a different story, and in any case, a more reliable one.”
The story of the containment centers is not an isolated one. It has been repeated before when the government offered Internet access to a young man who climbed the branches of a tree to get a signal. A necessary action, but one that did not solve the lack of Internet access for thousands of additional students.
The study’s conclusions state: “These acts belong to a unity, a discourse that arises from uniting the thousands of interactions and the millions of cases of socialization of said messages, including: insults against the political opposition, discrediting national rights organizations. and international people; indirect censorship by civil society; local harassment of the press; the strategic misinformation placed to create chaos and gain power; the conscious decision not to comply with the constitutional obligations arising from the position; or simple actions not to take responsibility for the failure of the pandemic management ”.
At the end, Duarte added a message to the President: “I hope that Nelson Mandela’s spirit of harmony and reconciliation will inspire his actions, that the wisdom of his father, Don Armando Bukele, will guide him in making decisions; and may he never forget the moral and constitutional appeal that it should be an instrument of peace and social harmony. He is still in time to regain the energy and mysticism with which he started his administration and which was lost on February 9 ”.
If you would like a digital copy of the study, which consists of 161 pages, write to the email: [email protected]