New pro-government campaign distorts causes and consequences of protests and post-election repression in 2024

A video campaign shared by pro-government channels promotes disinformation narratives about the use of social media in Venezuela and its effects.

In one of the videos, facts are manipulated to blame María Corina Machado for the victims of the protests. The phrases "we will collect" and "until the end" were used to peacefully demand the publication of election results, not to promote violence. Maria Corina Machado never called for violence and advocated peaceful means to protest the election results. The protests arose as a reaction to the results announced by the CNE, not by Machado's supporters, and repression was the cause of most of the victims.

Another video uses emotional propaganda to blame Machado for dividing the country or trivializes the economic crisis in Venezuela, promoting the narrative "Venezuela has fixed itself." This contrasts with the facts of the economic contraction of more than 8 years from which the country is only just beginning to recover. This video reinforces the narrative about supposed economic prosperity in Venezuela, showing clips of parties and Christmas lights, but ignoring the fact that the economic contraction experienced in the country has not yet been overcome.

The campaign is fueled by the theory of "cognitive warfare" with which the government tries to explain the presence of information threats on social networks, making a false equivalence between viral challenges (a theme present in other campaign videos) and opposition messages that encourage citizen participation.