Director of NetLab UFRJ, Marie Santini, and Maria Ressa, co-founder of Rappler and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner | Image: Personal archive
The director of the Laboratory of Internet and Social Network Studies at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (NetLab UFRJ), Rose Marie Santini, was invited to join the advisory committee of the 2023 Nobel Prize Summit – the only participant from Latin America.
Organized in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), the coordination aims to identify and promote open source digital solutions that can be expanded to deal with the disinformation problem at its roots.
Among the 99 proposals received by the Summit, nine initiatives were selected and awarded for having the potential to address the global challenge of information pollution.
One of them was the Brazilian organization Open Knowledge Brasil, creator of ‘Querido Diário’ (Dear Diary), which is a search tool to help citizens follow the actions of governments, facilitating access to information contained in the official gazettes of municipalities using artificial intelligence.
In an interview, R. Marie Santini said that one of the criteria adopted for evaluating the proposals was the ability to combat misinformation and excessive information. Santini, who was one of the seven members of the jury, emphasized that such problems can often be overcome by strengthening the quality of information.
Nobel Prize Summit 2023 | “Truth, Trust and Hope”
According to the Nobel Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences, the dissemination of fraudulent news is one of the biggest problems in the world today. Therefore, the theme chosen for the second edition of the Nobel Prize Summit was “Truth, Trust and Hope”.
This year, the event brought together Nobel Prize laureates, journalists, social leaders, civil society representatives and specialists from different areas between May 24th and 26th, in Washington, United States.