SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Douglas Guzmán’s TikTok feed was dotted with exercise routines and movies showcasing his favourite components of his nation.
That modified a few 12 months in the past, as rights teams, civil society and even some officers criticized El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele for violating human rights in his crackdown on felony gangs, and mentioned that his unconstitutional bid for re-election would corrode the nation’s democracy.
Inside days of Bukele asserting his bid for a second five-year time period, Guzmán’s feed was plastered with movies describing Bukele because the “future liberator of Latin America” and slick montages of the chief’s “mega-prison” for accused gangsters.
Views on the social media influencer’s movies skyrocketed. The 39-year-old member of Bukele’s social gathering mentioned he discovered a brand new mission: counteracting destructive press from unbiased media about his populist president.
“(Journalists) don’t know something. All they do is sit at their desks and watch as President Bukele … makes a large effort to save lots of hundreds of lives. However they don’t see that as a result of they’ve by no means cared in regards to the lives of Salvadorans,” Guzmán mentioned. “That’s why we’re right here. To point out the true actuality.”
Guzmán is a part of an increasing community of social media personalities performing as a megaphone for the millennial chief. On the similar time Bukele has cracked down on the press, his authorities has embraced these influencers. Because the president seeks to carry onto energy, he has harnessed that flood of pro-Bukele content material slowly turning his Central American nation into an informational echo chamber.
“A information group doing an investigation can’t evaluate to the sounding board that these influencers have as a result of they flood your social media with the federal government’s narrative,” mentioned Roberto Dubon, a communications strategist and congressional candidate for Bukele’s former social gathering, FMLN. “What you might have is an equipment to unfold their propaganda.”
Bukele, a 42-year-old chief usually donning a backwards baseball cap, labored years in political promoting earlier than social media turned a key to his rise to energy 5 years in the past. Since, his approval scores have soared to 90%, in keeping with a June CID Gallup ballot. Bukele’s trendy political messaging, charisma and brutal crackdown on the nation’s gangs solely proceed to win him followers domestically and overseas even within the midst of controversy.
By doing so, Bukele is utilizing a playbook more and more utilized by twenty first century autocrats, mentioned Seva Gunitsky, a political scientist on the College of Toronto.
Social media was as soon as hailed as the last word democratic device to arrange protests, even revolutions, internationally. Now, governments from Russia to Uganda at the moment are utilizing it to manage the narrative.
“They use this device of liberation know-how to really lengthen and strengthen their rule,” Gunitsky mentioned. Such governments use influencers as a result of their content material “doesn’t look as very like propaganda and is extra about shaping the narrative in additional refined methods.”
Beneath Bukele, El Salvador constructed a complicated communications machine. It locked down entry to data out of line with official messaging and employed groups of former journalists to supply blockbuster-quality movies showcasing safety forces taking up the nation’s gangs. The federal government additionally mimicked Russia, constructing a military of tech-savvy contractors – or “trolls” – to create faux social media accounts, unfold falsities and harass critics.
On the similar time his message of a strong-handed response to gang violence rippled throughout the area, gaining traction in different nations fighting crime throughout Latin America and Caribbean.
With it, an “complete business” has been born as influencers latch onto the president’s picture, mentioned Oscar Picardo, director of investigations at El Salvador’s Universidad Francisco Gavidia.
A research by Picardo’s college and native investigative outlet Factum examined 69 pro-Bukele YouTube accounts, which collectively have extra followers than the inhabitants of El Salvador. They discovered many accounts – which generate profits by view and subscriber counts – can earn as much as tens of hundreds of {dollars} a month, far better than El Salvador’s common wage. That content material is devoured each inside El Salvador, and by most of the 2.3 million Salvadorans residing in the US.
The cluster of accounts pumped out practically 32 hours of pro-Bukele content material in a single day in Might, the research discovered. Nearly at all times mirroring authorities language, 90% of the movies analyzed contained false or deceptive data.
One account, Noticias Cuscatlecas, might earn a lot as $400,000 yearly posting movies of violent assaults from alleged gang members layered over chilling music, UFG and Factum calculated.
The channel usually concludes movies with the identical message: “(Bukele) devised a plan to exterminate this most cancers from society, and the unbelievable factor is that he’s succeeding. Now the individuals not reside in concern.”
On TikTok, one video declares “God selected Bukele as president of El Salvador.” On YouTube, personalities dressed as TV anchors assault human rights teams and journalists. They function Bukele’s critics bursting into flames whereas claiming their channel “brings you the newest information”. Others sit down for an unique interview with the president.
In April, the president of El Salvador’s congress Ernesto Castro introduced he was opening the meeting to YouTubers and social media influencers to “inform with objectivity.”
“The precise to tell and be told is an influence not simply within the palms of media firms,” Castro wrote on Twitter.
Requests by the AP for interviews with Bukele and his cupboard all through his greater than 4 years in workplace have been declined or ignored. Two individuals with data of the inside workings of Bukele’s media machine declined to talk to the AP out of concern of the federal government.
For Guzmán and others, the entry was empowering, enabling them to develop their audiences. Since, Guzmán has been provided entry to different giant occasions just like the inauguration of Central American and Caribbean Video games, one thing specialists say Bukele used to indicate a pleasant face to the world.
Press credentials hung across the TikToker’s neck and he brimmed with satisfaction in a authorities press field, standing amongst different selfie stick-wielding influencers.
“Us being right here, accredited, I really feel like I’m part of this,” Guzmán mentioned, eyes crinkling with a broad smile.
Round him, others took turns interviewing one another and bragged about how many individuals have been linked to their feeds. One man sporting a Hawaiian shirt leapt over rows of bleachers to get a greater sign. When Bukele walked on stage to provide a speech, Guzmán and others chanted “Re-election!”
El Salvador’s authorities just isn’t the primary to open its doorways to social media personalities, however researchers and critics says the environment created in El Salvador marks a specific danger as different leaders within the area search to imitate Bukele.
Picardo, the UFG investigator, mentioned such accounts publish a deluge of content material when the federal government is making an attempt to publicize one thing, just like the chief’s experiment with Bitcoin, its gang crackdown or the Video games.
The researcher warned their more and more hostile tone acts as a harbinger for additional deteriorating press freedoms, echoing State Division alarms of a “villainization” of journalists by Bukele.
Oscar Martínez’s award-winning information group El Faro is amongst these dealing with assaults and harassment for its intensive investigation of Bukele, together with audio evidencing that Bukele’s administration negotiated with gangs to be able to dip violence.
The federal government opened a case towards El Faro for tax evasion, one thing the information website known as “ utterly baseless.” Telephones of dozens of journalists have been hacked with Pegasus spyware and adware, usually utilized by governments to spy on opponents.
In April, El Faro introduced it will transfer its heart of operations to Costa Rica resulting from escalating harassment.
He worries their investigations is being drowned out by the flood of disinformation, and mentioned if Bukele stays in energy within the upcoming elections, it would put reporters in El Salvador “rather more in danger.”
“At that second, Bukele goes to determine to eliminate any impediment he has throughout the nation, and the primary impediment he has proper now could be the free press,” Martínez mentioned.