INFORMATION POVERTY AND DISINFORMATION AS DRIVERS OF GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE
Keywords:
gender, violence against women, information poverty, disinformationAbstract
This study aims to analyze the mechanisms through which information poverty, combined with disinformation, reduces women’s ability to identify, report, and break cycles of gender-based violence. The relevance of this research lies in the need to understand gender-based violence, with a particular focus on femicide, as informational phenomena. Methodologically, this is a theoretical-reflective study of a basic nature, grounded in bibliographic and documentary research, employing a qualitative approach anchored in Information Science and articulated with gender studies and information justice studies. This research draws on the works of Elfreda Chatman, Johannes J. Britz, as well as Elsa Hedling and Martina Smedberg to discuss information poverty, disinformation, and gendered disinformation. The findings indicate that the four structuring factors of information poverty examined in this study (secrecy, deception, risk-taking, and situational relevance) operate, in this context, as mechanisms within the cycle that precedes femicide and other forms of gender-based violence against women. Breaking this cycle requires structural action capable of integrating public policy, critical education, and information justice as inseparable dimensions of the struggle against gender-based violence.