A New Superhero Battles Fake News In Argentine Short ‘Verified: Xika Vs. The Disinformation’

Buenos Aires-based animation studio Clubcamping recently teamed with Brazilian organization Vero in the battle against disinformation in Latin American politics and media.

Together, the groups created a two-minute animated short titled Verificables: Xika vs la Desinformación (Verified: Xika vs. the Disinformation), which features a neon-clad superheroine who fights against fake news and teaches viewers how to identify and debunk disinformation.

Clubcamping was founded in 2018, meaning the pandemic heavily influenced its formative years. According to the studio, “After the pandemic, we felt compelled to create a signature short with a Latin American flair, addressing the pressing issue of disinformation in our ‘post-truth’ age.”

To do so, the studio teamed up with Vero, a group of researchers and content creators in Brazil dedicated to turning the internet into a healthier and more sustainable environment for all users.

“The initiative arises from the perception that electoral disinformation is a transcontinental and coordinated phenomenon, with tactical operation patterns,” explains Vero. “Therefore, there is an opportunity for learning among countries that face this phenomenon in the Latin American region.”

According to the team at Clubcamping, “Our creative challenge [with the short] was twofold: depict the transformative power of disinformation without causing offense, and design characters representative of the disinformation crisis.”

The goal was vital because the short is meant to be educational, and if viewers feel offended, they’re more likely to tune out without learning anything. That means that when designing the short’s evil characters, artists had to be careful not to draw anything too familiar. They wanted the disinformation peddlers to be recognizable, but not so much so that anyone from the real world could be identified in the piece. That said, the Clubcamping team admits, “If you look closely, squint a little, and turn your head sideways, you will recognize some of those a-holes.”

The bad guys in Verified are drawn with ugly, mismatched features and proportions, making them far easier to identify than their real-life counterparts.

Meanwhile, Xika is drawn with more realistic proportions and features, representing her relationship with the truth. She, and eventually several other everyday superheroes, are brightly colored and move with a fluidity that leaves no mistake that they’re on the right side of the fight.

The short takes place in a Latin American setting, and the backgrounds were influenced by some of the region’s most recognizable cities, such as Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Bogotá, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, and Lima. It’s not a specific setting, but it’s certainly familiar to anyone who has spent time in a big city in South America.