The UPF Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM), and the I4T Global Knowledge Network, in collaboration with a coalition of global and regional partners, today announced the publication and dissemination of a comprehensive regional report: “Digital Platform Regulation in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean: From Diagnosis to a Roadmap for Action.” Developed with the support of UNESCO and funding from the European Union, the report serves as a critical milestone in the project Safeguarding Freedom of Expression and Access to Information through the Implementation of the UNESCO Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms.
The publication provides an unprecedented mapping of the regulatory landscapes across Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Panama. It contrasts current national frameworks against UNESCO’s Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms identifying critical gaps in how these nations address systemic digital risks such as electoral disinformation, online gender-based violence, and opaque algorithmic moderation.
“This report marks a turning point for digital governance in Central America and the Caribbean,” said Rodrigo Cetina Presuel, Associate Dean for Education and Academic Affairs at UPF-BSM and Project Lead and one of the I4T Global Knowledge Network’s co-Chairs. “Our findings highlight that most states in the region face a near-vacuum when it comes to digital platform governance. Small markets cannot hold Big Tech accountable in isolation. The ultimate recommendation of this report is a call to action—these nations must forge a unified regional bloc to successfully demand algorithmic transparency, linguistic and cultural inclusion, and a safe, human rights-respecting digital ecosystem.”
Key Findings and Strategic Recommendations:
The report is the culmination of extensive desk research, multi-stakeholder surveys, and capacity-building workshops that brought together digital regulators, electoral authorities, lawmakers, and civil society organizations from across the region. Key highlights include:
- A Shift to Systems-Based Regulation: A pressing need to transition from reactive, individual content moderation (which risks censorship) to the transparent supervision of the underlying processes and algorithms of digital platforms.
- Safeguarding Electoral Integrity: Urgent calls to prohibit political micro-targeting based on sensitive data and to mitigate the rapidly escalating threat of Generative AI in democratic processes.
- Different Regulatory Authorities must work together: Several institutions within the State must combine their competences to oversee digital platforms. An innovative proposal that emerged from the workshops in the region is to leverage existing national banking and financial superintendencies to track local monetization and ad spending, enlisting authorities not traditionally expected to be involved in platform governance, in enforcing regulation.
- The Regional Bloc Strategy: A strategic roadmap for the next 3 to 5 years, empowering these nations to negotiate collectively with digital platforms rather than navigating the imbalance of power individually.
Dissemination and Global Impact:
Effective immediately, the final report, which features country-specific policy recommendations and a roadmap for action—is available via open-access.
To ensure long-term impact, the findings from this initiative are being directly shared with UNESCO and the I4T Global Knowledge Network. The regional practices, indicators, and tools developed through this project seek to contribute to global platform governance through context-specific contributions from the Global South.
The project was led by UPF-BSM together with the I4T Global Knowledge Network and in close partnership with the Complutense University of Madrid, the Global Network of Electoral Justice, LIDIA UNAM (Mexico), IFED of the Supreme Court of Elections (Costa Rica), the Electoral Tribunal (Panama), and the Catholic University of Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic).
READ MORE: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/new-report-examines-digital-platform-governance-central-america-and-caribbean?hub=701
