WhatsApp is how a lot of Latinos connect, but it’s also a hotbed of fake news | Guest opinion
In the lead-up to the U.S. midterm elections, both Democrats and Republicans flooded digital and broadcast media channels with bilingual Spanish/English ads targeting the Latinos. After all, the diverse communities that fall into this broad category of voters were viewed as a deciding factor not only for the midterms, but also for what will likely be increasingly contentious U.S. elections for years to come — in particular, the 2024 presidential contest.
Strategies for swaying Latino voters are changing and not for the better. To segment this massive population — filled with people who have roots, and often family, in other countries throughout the Americas — campaigns and other political groups are turning to increasingly illicit and deceptive methods of outreach. A great deal of this manipulative political communication is happening over encrypted messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal.
The motivation for employing messaging apps, particularly WhatsApp, is pragmatic. These private chat spaces are hugely popular among Latin American groups in the United States whose members use them to keep in touch with family, friends and other contacts at home and abroad. These communities have ties to people in many different countries and regions around the world with a range of political experiences, cultural backgrounds and religious leanings. For many, their civic engagement is being hampered by an increasing amount of poor-quality digital information aimed specifically at regional and cultural enclaves.
Through our ongoing research with the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin on how diaspora communities are affected by political disinformation and misinformation spread, we’ve found that false political information is increasingly spreading on encrypted messaging apps.
In a recent survey of U.S. diaspora communities, we found that WhatsApp and private messaging spaces are the second-most important medium for the spread of false information — behind “mainstream” social-media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so forth) but ahead of online news sites, radio news and network television news.
As an encrypted messaging app, WhatsApp is removed from the content moderation regimes that define Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. On those sites, blatantly false content is regularly removed, but to uphold WhatsApp’s safety promises and ensure end-to-end encryption, scrutiny of messages by corporate content moderators is not an option.
Instead, the platform has initiated meta-data-based interventions limiting the forwarding of messages. Meanwhile, media organizations, non-governmental organizations and researchers have started “WhatsApp tip lines” by which users can report problematic messages and are provided with fact-checked responses to their inquiries. In the United States, however, these tip lines receive comparatively little traction.
Many of our interviewees reported that they are uncomfortable with reporting or speaking out against disinformation they see on WhatsApp. This is largely because they receive this content from close friends and family in small group chats, and do not want to report family or have a falling out over politics with close friends.
Political disinformation on messaging apps often spreads in different languages. An article from a mainstream news site could be shared in English, but the accompanying text is in Spanish and misrepresents the original article. When such a message gets forwarded, it tends to elicit reactions to the accompanying text in Spanish rather than the original article, and the misinformation quickly takes on a life of its own.
Many members of diaspora communities reported messaging apps as convenient vehicles for receiving political news and information. They also note that structural dynamics — including linguistic and cultural barriers — lead them to consume content from alternate news sources rather than “mainstream” U.S. outlets. These relatively protected environments offer an alternative to what is considered the majority-dominated public discourse (or mainstream news).
With regard to Mexican Americans, for instance, the cultural production of Mexican identity in U.S. media produces a Mexican threat narrative in the American public’s mind, emphasizing the alleged criminality or foreignness of those “others.”
In effect, diaspora communities are sometimes more vulnerable to misinformation precisely because they demonstrate a higher degree of skepticism and a critical stance with regards to official news sources.
Inga Trauthig is the research manager of the Propaganda Research Lab at the Center for Media Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin. Samuel Woolley is program director of propaganda at The University of Texas at Austin.
