Pope
Francis on Thursday warned against the “disinformation” and “targeted
distortion of facts” to be found on the Internet and social networks’
“manipulation of personal data”.
The Internet “is a source of
knowledge and relationships that were once unthinkable,” the Argentine pope
said in a message for the World Day of Social Communications.
“However… many experts also
highlight the risks that threaten the search for, and sharing of, authentic
information on a global scale,” he said.
“If the Internet represents an extraordinary possibility of access to
knowledge, it is also true that it has proven to be one of the areas most
exposed to disinformation and to the conscious and targeted distortion of
facts,” the Argentine pope said.
“We need
to recognise how social networks, on the one hand, help us to better connect,
rediscover, and assist one another, but on the other, lend themselves to the
manipulation of personal data, aimed at obtaining political or economic
advantages, without due respect for the person and his or her rights,” he said.
On social networks, “we define
ourselves starting with what divides us rather than with what unites us, giving
rise to suspicion and to the venting of every kind of prejudice,” the pontiff
said.
“This tendency encourages
groups that exclude diversity, that even in the digital environment nourish
unbridled individualism which sometimes ends up fomenting spirals of hatred. In
this way, what ought to be a window on the world becomes a showcase for exhibiting
personal narcissism.”
This year’s World Day of
Social Communications will be marked on June 2, the Vatican said.
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