Tec Media Observatory analyzed 500,000 items for academic use in 2025

Professor Alejandro Martín del Campo reported that more than half a million pieces of data collected during the Digital Media Observatory's first year were used by professors and students.

When presenting its 2025 activity report, the observatory highlighted the academic use of its databases, with activities such as monitoring, data collection, and analysis undertaken for academic research, as well as by external groups.

"This report accounts for the Digital Media Observatory's second year of operations, and it gives a broad account of how the databases were used", said the professor.

The Observatory's website, launched in May 2024, aims to identify and monitor dominant and emerging narratives in digital media across Mexico.

Data for academic research

Professor Alejandro Martín del Campo stated that different academic programs used their databases to conduct research in class with students.

"A good number of groups from the Machine Learning and data visualization sections of the Computing Technology Engineering program used our databases to answer questions we asked them", the professor said.

The collected data was used for research on sentiment analysis, digital storytelling, disinformation, and visualization proposals.

"More than half a million pieces of data collected in the Observatory's first year were used.

"When we collected data for the 2024 presidential elections, we made the complete database available and they performed some interesting analyses", he added.

"More than half a million pieces of data collected in the Observatory's first year were used".

Research into the use of TikTok during judiciary elections

One of the research projects and analyses carried out during 2025 was on the use of the social media platform TikTok to connect with young people during the election of the Mexican judiciary.

"We saw that candidates were using this platform to raise their profile and trying to connect with young audiences. However, the conversation didn't really move forward until after the election".

He explained that an artificial intelligence agent was created to answer questions about the selection of ministers.

VerifactzGPT: The tool against disinformation

VerifactzGPT, the Observatory's fact-checking network, focuses on distinguishing between reliable and misleading content on social media.

The report provided by the Tec's Digital Media Observatory shows that this agent is based on ChatGPT-5 and OpenAI technology, and that it was trained using the observatory's fact-checking method.

A user can upload suspicious social media messages and ask the chatbot to help verify the information.

"We improved our tool; in fact, we were very lucky because maldita.es, who are in Spain, contacted us and told us that they are using it and that they would like us to work together.

"Something that started very locally has grown and, in fact, we were invited to compete for funding in Europe so that we could make a much stronger version of Verifactz", he commented.

The World Cup and health: Trends to follow in 2026

Alejandro Martín del Campo shared that this year they want to expand their research beyond political, cultural, and social contexts.

One of the topics that will be trending this year is the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be held in Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

"The World Cup, as we know, can be a trigger for many related issues, such as discrimination, immigration, etc.

"We are seeing how it represents a complex series of phenomena. However, many people, undoubtedly, still only think about it in sporting terms", he said.

Finally, he noted that they will seek to include higher-impact issues such as health, where they anticipate having a significant impact when dismantling disinformation campaigns.

If you would like to see the full report, you can download it here.

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