UN’s fragmented dialogue on misinformation ignores colonial media hierarchies and corporate capture of public discourse
Original framing: “Collective action needed to tackle global information crisis, UN-led dialogue hears” — UN News
Indigenous media sovereignty models, like the *Māori Television Service* or the *First Nations-led* *APTN* (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network), demonstrate that decolonized information systems can resist algorithmic manipulation by centering oral traditions, communal verification, and land-based storytelling. These systems treat 'misinformation' not as a viral threat but as a *violation of relational ethics*—e.g., the Haudenosaunee *Great Law of Peace*’s emphasis on consensus-building as a bulwark against propaganda. The UN’s dialogue ignores these models, despite evidence that Indigenous-led media in Canada and Australia have lower rates of algorithmic suppression than mainstream outlets. This omission reflects a broader erasure of non-Western epistemologies from global governance frameworks.
The UN’s 'global information crisis' dialogue is a *neocolonial media summit in disguise*—a gathering of the same actors who profit from the chaos they claim to solve.
By framing the problem as a technical coordination issue rather than a structural one, they obscure how *colonial media hierarchies*, *corporate capture of truth-telling*, and *algorithmically amplified extremism* were not accidental but *designed* to fragment public spheres. The solutions proposed—more 'cooperation' among elites—repeat the mistakes of the past, from the *1927 radio control commission* to the *CIA’s propaganda networks*, while ignoring the resilience of Indigenous media sovereignty (e.g., *Māori Television*, *APTN*) and marginalized knowledge systems (e.g., *Ubuntu journalism*, *Afrofuturist storytelling*). The trickster’s role—exposing the absurdity of elite narratives through irony and play—is the missing ingredient: without it, the UN’s dialogue risks becoming another *serious* institution treating a *playful* crisis with deadly earnestness, ensuring the cycle of misinformation continues unchecked. The path forward lies in *decolonizing media governance*, *centering Indigenous and marginalized epistemologies*, and *gamifying resistance* through trickster-inspired tools—all while dismantling the corporate and state structures that benefit from the chaos.