Interview with Diego García Ramírez
The introduction of Digital Tribulations, a series of intellectual interviews on the developments of digital sovereignty in Latin America, can be read here. 
I left the Brazilian Amazon in mid-December 2025 to continue my journey into Colombia, a country I still knew little about. My arrival in Manizales was the culmination of an exhausting, multi-modal odyssey: a taxi from Alter do Chão to Santarém, a sixteen-hour lancha rápida (fast boat) upriver to Manaus, a flight to Panama, a connection to Bogotá, another hop to Pereira in the heart of the Eje Cafetero, and finally, a winding bus ride up the Andean slopes.
I had been invited there by Mateo, a Colombian friend and doctoral candidate I met in New York. Manizales is a city that grows vertically; looking out from my B&B window, the steep, dense neighborhoods mirrored the aesthetic of Rio’s favelas, yet the atmosphere was worlds apart. Voted the most livable city in Latin America, it felt remarkably peaceful. I spent the following days with Mateo visiting the cathedral—resiliently rebuilt after three fires—and gliding over the terrain on the cable, the Italian-built cable car system that serves as the city’s primary pulse.
It was the Christmas season, and Mateo’s family observed the traditional Novena. In a practice that felt increasingly rare among my peers, we gathered to recite Gospel passages and share buñuelos, the quintessential Colombian holiday treat: golden, fried dough balls made with corn flour and a salty white cheese. With Mateo, I began to delve into the complexities of the peace accords and the fascinating topic of transitional justice, a field in which he is an expert.
The buñuelo.
Between these quiet family moments, I explored the neighboring towns of Pereira and Armenia, and I eventually reached Salento and the Cocora Valley. There, amidst the world’s tallest wax palms, I hiked for hours with two Italian expats—one a psychonaut living in Portland and the other an UNICEF specialist from Mexico City—crossing small rivers and documenting the local birdlife. 
After this immersion into Colombian traditions, I was ready to face Bogotá and its brisk mountain climate. At 2,640 meters above sea level, it is the highest capital in the world. Coming from the sweltering Amazonian rivers, the transition to sleeping under thick blankets felt almost tragic – though the crisp air grew pleasant during the day—and it felt like a luxury to be able to drink tap water again. I initially stayed in Rosales, a hip and rich neighborhood, where I was hosted by Jose, a kind furniture designer I had hosted in Italy months prior.
What I did not anticipate was how the city empties during Christmas. As many rolos (people from Bogotà) head to their hometowns or family fincas (country farms), the usually frantic metropolis becomes somehow quiet. I filled this time visiting the Gold Museum, with its collection of pre-Hispanic goldwork, and the Botero Museum, before climbing up to Monserrate—the mountain lookout that serves as both a religious pilgrimage site and a panoramic window into the city’s massive scale.
Once the New Year passed, the city hummed back to life, and I could begin my work. Diego, professor of journalism at the University of Rosario, kindly agreed to meet. After lunch in Rosales, we sat in a café sipping Colombian espressos, blessed by the sun, to discuss a phenomenon he has witnessed firsthand: the platformization of the media and how it is reshaping the very fabric of Latin American democracy.
The palm trees at the Cocora Valley.
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What do you do, and what has been your career path?
I am a journalism professor at the Universidad del Rosario here in Bogotá. Additionally, I coordinate a Master’s program in Digital Political Communication at the same university. I am an anthropologist from the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín; I completed my Master’s in Communication and my PhD in Communication and Culture at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. I have been dedicated to communication and journalism studies at the Universidad del Rosario for eight years.
Since I’ve been at Rosario—which has a unique program in Colombia because it is one of the few that still trains specifically in journalism rather than social communication, which is the trend in Latin America—we have developed a line of study regarding journalism and all its transformations. Journalism has been undergoing technological changes for about 20 or 25 years, but when I did my doctorate, I approached the political economy of communication. Studying journalism from that perspective, I began to establish relationships between all the powers and interests that have historically been behind the profession and what is happening now with the digital transformation.
And where does your interest in the issue of digital platforms and how they transform media come from?
I came to study the impact of platforms on the journalism industry, the news sector, and the work of journalists. That’s where we started analyzing the dependence on big tech. My hypothesis is that, without much knowledge, the industry and journalists engaged with platforms under the belief—very typical of the enthusiasm of the 90s—that technology was going to empower all sectors. I believe that journalism, education, and other sectors blindly embraced technology and digital platforms under promises of more revenue, more audience, more reach, and more traffic. Media outlets blindly deposited their content onto the platforms, and that’s how I arrived at the concept of “platformization.” The news industry developed an absolute dependence; they deposited all their content into whatever social network appeared.
If Twitter threads became fashionable, they made Twitter threads. When Facebook said “pivot to video” in 2015, media outlets started making videos. They did Facebook Live when they were told it was necessary. When they said short news for Instagram with images was needed, they did it. When they said short videos for TikTok were needed, they did them. When they said podcasts were needed, they made podcasts. When they said you had to be on YouTube, they were there. An author from Columbia called it “the hamster wheel,” and I take up that idea to say that journalism remains on a constant hamster wheel. Seeking a state of adaptation to technological innovations, they run on the wheel and get nowhere. I think that happened to journalism, and that is why it is in its current crisis: because it doesn’t know how to navigate a digital environment dominated by platforms.
In the Latin American and Colombian case, I think there is much more ignorance and less capacity for action regarding these platforms. The media employed and used them, but the platforms—in the case of Google and Facebook—arrived with great force through philanthropic projects like the Google News Initiative and the Facebook (now Meta) Journalism Project. So, in addition to platforms already controlling content distribution, data and consumption metrics began to directly influence journalistic production. I believe it is an industry that is today totally captured by platforms. That was my approach to understanding what was happening with journalism in the digital world from the perspective of political economy.
In this context, do you think it makes sense to talk about Latin America as a block, or are there more differences than commonalities between countries? And how do you see the specific situation of journalism and media in the region?
I like that question because, although one might generalize and say “Latin America,” framing all countries from Mexico to Argentina, I think speaking of Latin America is useful at certain times, but many nuances must be applied. The reality of a country like Brazil or Mexico—which are large economies with historically strong political projects in the region—is not the same as that of Central American countries or even South American ones like Bolivia, Ecuador, or Peru. And Colombia has its particularity. One can encompass Latin America, but inside there are many differences; it cannot be worked as a single, homogeneous, and equal block. There are many dynamics that prevent speaking in that way, and one must be very careful when treating the region as a uniform entity.
Generalizing, in most countries—both large and medium-sized—media have always been linked to political and economic powers. Therefore, journalism did not have the independence that would allow it to act against a global power. The concentration of media ownership made them very close allies to local and national powers, so they did not have the autonomy to face a global power much larger than themselves. They aligned blindly with the platforms. Except for some organizations in Brazil and Argentina, such as journalists’ associations or unions that have posed opposition, the rest do not have journalistic brands that stand up to the platforms. This also happens because the resources, tools, and funds provided by these companies were, and continue to be, very attractive to Latin American media.
An industry in crisis, with a loss of credibility and falling sales, welcomes platforms when they say: “We have training so you can improve your traffic, make better videos and digital content, and we also give you $50,000.” That was very well received by the industry in Latin America, with states that also did not protect their industry, with exceptions like Brazil, where the government has tried to regulate platform remuneration to journalism. In general, we do not have the technical capacity or political power to confront the platforms. If a country like Colombia proposes a regulation, Google or Facebook will say: “Who is Colombia and where is it? Why are they making those proposals?”
What have been the consequences of this platformization in Latin America for news consumers and for journalists? At first, there was talk of a disintermediation movement, which seemed like a promise of freedom, but it ended in centralization.
I think that, as you say, the rhetoric of technological advances and platforms was very powerful, especially in journalism, because it was said that social networks were going to democratize access, distribution, and production. The idea sold was that the only beneficiaries would be the citizenry, audiences, and democracy. But many of those promises remained just that.
I focus more on the impact on the industry and journalists. For the media worker, this led to a much stronger and more visible precariousness. Today journalists are evaluated and valued by their metrics in the digital environment: how many views, how much reach, how many shares their product has. I know that journalists today are asked to produce ten news items daily that must be published on all networks and reach certain metric levels. It is precarious because, apart from the fact that salaries were already bad, now they are worse, and they do much more with less. Sometimes media outlets don’t even provide the tools for this work. Journalistic success became limited to success on platforms. It doesn’t matter if you do the deepest investigation or uncover the most relevant corruption case; what counts is how many “likes” or “views” it had on social networks. It is a central part of the dependence and platformization of the sector.
If you change the word “journalist” to “academic,” the situation is almost identical because we are also super-quantified. And artificial intelligence seems to increase this, forcing us to publish constantly. Is there a relationship between digital sovereignty and these changes in digital media?
Exactly, it is slavery because even when a journalist or a public figure publishes something on a social network, they lose control over the content; it is the algorithm that decides who sees it and what reach it has. And there is the problem of shadow banning.
Regarding sovereignty, many people are starting to talk about it, but I don’t think digital sovereignty can be understood without what sovereignty originally is in political, economic, social, and cultural terms. It depends on who says it and from where. Some say the State should be more sovereign in the treatment of data and the infrastructure of its citizens, or that companies should have greater sovereignty.
Relating it to journalism, it is impossible for digital sovereignty to exist in a country and in a sector where prior sovereignty has never existed. Within Latin American geopolitics, Colombia has a particular history of political and economic dependence on the United States, not only because of its strategic position but because of the history of the conflict and interests in the fight against drugs and terrorism. Colombia has been the United States’ strategic ally in the region. For example, one can analyze why Colombia did not have a dictatorship in the 60s and 70s when a good part of the continent did; that is due to the strong influence of the United States in national life.
When you relate that to the digital project, you see how technological development projects are aligned with ideological interests. Despite being a US ally, Colombia was an underdeveloped country, and they were told: “What your country lacks is technology.” The development and progress projects that politics failed to fulfill were going to be done through technology. We call that technical ideology. Countries like Colombia bought that discourse easily: with more internet access, more data, and more mobile phones, we were going to achieve development. Today’s snapshot is that we have more access and internet, but the country remains just as inequitable and unequal. If we weren’t sovereign before, we will be even less so in the digital world when platforms have captured almost everyone. There are no resistance projects in journalism or politics. In Colombia, anyone who opposes seems to be opposing the country’s development.
Although there is some discourse about digital sovereignty in Latin America, only countries like Brazil or Uruguay take practical measures. Is there no national strategy in Colombia to take advantage of these opportunities?
I believe that this topic doesn’t even enter the political agenda and very little in the academic one. Colombia has so many other problems to prioritize—crime, drug trafficking, inequality, violence, insecurity, labor precariousness—that when one suggests that the problem is technological dependence on large corporations, they say that is the least of the problems. Since social movements have historically been concerned with access to land or labor, the issue of technology does not enter the agenda. I also have the hypothesis that it is an issue of a lack of technical knowledge among our legislators and politicians; they do not have the capacity to put it on the agenda. The European Union has a critical mass thinking about these issues; in Colombia, there are fewer people, and academic discussions do not reach the political sphere. Here there have been politicians who have attempted regulations, but when regulating Uber or delivery platforms is proposed, they say: “How are you going to regulate that if it gives people jobs?”. Regulation is understood as opposition to progress and people’s development.
It’s just that platforms have captured everything: infrastructure, tools, services, sectors, and even regulation. The public policy proposal and the very concept of sovereignty are captured. That is why we speak of technical ideology, because it is a capture of all discussions regarding the technical. If you raise a criticism, you are branded a technological pessimist or Luddite. In our countries, platforms capture political lobbying very easily.
There was a very powerful work by CLIP (Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism) called “The Hand of Big Tech in Latin America,” which shows how they have captured political and academic discourse. You have people researching regulation funded by Big Tech. Even in academia: if Microsoft arrives and gives dollars to a university to research digital sovereignty, the university does it because it is a lot of money, but that marks a research agenda funded by a company. The same happens in investigative journalism events funded by the Google News Initiative. It is not bad in itself, but to what extent can you be critical or apply for an award given by the very company you should be monitoring?
Do you think this technological imaginary is something people assume consciously? Because every mayor or president always includes technological promises in their plans.
I haven’t sat down to study all the projects, but I know that the National Planning Department uses algorithms and data processing to allocate resources to the poor, for example. The imaginary that progress lies in technology is very strong. That discourse stuck all over the world, but it was more powerful in poor countries because it promised that, with technology, you would achieve what politics could not. In Medellín, it was said that it was the Colombian Silicon Valley. We have startups like Rappi, which is our model to show off, or Nubank, which belongs to a Colombian and is one of the largest digital banks. There is also Platzi. Those success stories show that with technology you can be a successful capitalist by reproducing the American model of innovation.
I think the progressive movement of the beginning of the century had much more regional articulation and coherence. Now left-wing governments are trying to survive their own internal problems, and it is more difficult for them to have a strong regional project. While Lula and Petro share some ideas, the right and the extreme right have co-opted important countries like Argentina or Chile. In Colombia, furthermore, the State is very devalued and reduced; everything was privatized very quickly: education, health, public services. The Colombian State is much weaker.
Looking toward the coming years, what measures do you think could be taken to protect journalism?
It is always difficult to predict, but out of optimism and rationality, I say that the first step is to put the issue on the public agenda. It is a small but vital step: that more people discuss this and that it does not remain only in the academic sphere. It happens with artificial intelligence: it is everywhere, but there is no one congregating the discussion about its consequences on human rights, the economy, or autonomy. The debate must include social movements, academia, politicians, and the economic sector, listening to everyone equally. In Colombia, civil society is usually disqualified on technical issues by saying “you don’t know about this.”
We would also have to think about a regional block. It is impossible for a single country to face the platforms; Colombia is an insignificant market for them. Acting as a block is difficult because we have never done it and each country pulls for its own side. Mercosur could be a space, but it depends a lot on the ideological affinities of the moment. My experience is in the media sector and, from my perspective, if journalism is captured, the consequences affect public opinion and democracy. Liberating the media from technological dependence is a priority.
The view of Bogotà from Monserrate.