How disinformation is targeting immigrants, Black people, and Latinos

On Thursday, September 26, CALÓ News and the Latino Media Collaborative (LMC) hosted an online event titled “Fighting Election Lies That Target Our Communities,” which focused on how hate and disinformation in both social and mainstream media are specifically targeting immigrants, Black people, and Latinos. 

This event, organized in partnership with Free Press and Democracy Is, was part of the ongoing Diálogo Series, a regular convening space launched by LMC to discuss and foster dialogue about the most pressing issues for Latinos and community leaders. 

With 38 days away from the 2024 presidential elections, the first-ever virtual Diálogo, held via Zoom, touched on one of the concerns shadowing this cycle: disinformation and anti-immigrant rhetoric.  

Speakers and panelists included a list of experienced immigrant and media advocates, including Jessica Gonzalez, attorney and racial-justice advocate and Co-CEO of Free Press; Roberta Braga, disinformation advocate and founder and executive director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA); Vanessa Cárdenas,  political strategist and policy expert and executive director of America's Voice; Anshantia Oso, a defender of Black narrative power and senior director for Media 2070; and Jennie Carreon, CEO of Carreon Group. 

The Diálogo began with opening remarks from Arturo Carmona, founder of Tzunu Strategies and director of LMC, and Gonzalez, who moderated the conversation with the additional guest speakers and panelists.  

Carmona spoke of the importance and impact that the upcoming elections will have on all communities, including Latinos. “We know the importance that this election represents,” he said. “It’s consequential in so many ways, and it feels like we've said this in every election, but this time it's really reached a decibel that we haven't seen before.” 

Gonzalez shared a recent study, titled “2024 Poll: Americans' Views on Media, Technology and Democracy,” which was commissioned by the Free Press and highlighted the alarming effects of dissinformation. The study revealed that 76% of poll respondents were concerned that they were reading disinformation online about the presidential election. Nearly 80% of Americans (79%) said that what they read online can contain “false or fake” information that’s deliberately disseminated “to confuse” — with people of color the most targeted, according to the poll. 

 “Millions of immigrants are living quietly and in harmony with native-born residents. We are neighbors, coworkers and friends and we care for each other across racial, ethnic and partisan lines, yet we rarely see those stories on the nightly news or the front page of the newspaper; these are never the stories going viral on social media platforms,” Gonzalez said. “Instead, we are seeing, on repeat, stories that exploit and demonize immigrants. We're gathered here today with some of the foremost experts in this country to say enough already. We're here to expose this crisis and to call on social and traditional media companies to do more to address it.” 

Carreon talked about Proposition 187, a 1994 anti-immigration proposition known as the “Save Our State” initiative, designed to deny almost every state social service to undocumented immigrants. The bill, which was championed by former California Governor Pete Wilson, would prohibit immigrants from receiving a public K–12 education, non-emergency public health care, or any other public social service. 

“I was one of the class presidents that organized 10,000 students to march out of LAUSD schools. Thankfully, Prop 187 was struck down by the courts, but 30 years later, here we are hearing again the same rhetoric,” she said. 

Carreon was referring to the Presidential Transition Project, also known as Project 2025, a 900-page policy "wish list" proposal for what could be the next Republican president and which negatively tackles topics like abortion, immigration, climate and education, among other things. 

It was created by the Heritage Foundation, an entity that has played a major role in influencing other former Republican administrations. More than 100 conservative organizations contributed to the document, along with some of Donald Trump’s former administration officials, including Russell Vought. 

“Project 2025 is Prop 187 on steroids,” Carreon said. “Once again, our communities are under attack, and we need to stay vigilant.” 

Carreon also took some time to talk about voting education and said first-time voters can get intimidated and apprehensive about the process. “As a community, we need to do a stronger job at educating our new voters on the mechanics of how to vote,” she told attendees. “Even when I get a ballot, it's a thick piece of paper; it's long and you have to sit down and go through it.”

Cardenas, one of the panelists at Thursday's event, talked about how the issue of immigration is being used as a political strategy to create hate and fear in our communities, specifically in this year's election and candidate debates. “It's with the purpose of fostering distrust, not just in our [political] systems but also in each other,” she said.

Cardenas also shared some of the conspiracy theories and false narratives that her organization has been vigilant about. One of the false and rapidly spread theories is that illegal immigrants will be able to vote in November, as well as the false notion that crime and racial tensions are rising in communities where there is a large population of immigrants. “It is creating sort of the conditions for our communities to be against each other and accept ideas that are extreme and very much racist,” she said. 

Oso talked about the ways anti-Blackness and anti-Black xenophobia are playing a role in the 2024 election and have also played a historical role in the media.   

One of the latest examples of this happened during the last presidential debate this month when Trump said Haitians in Springfield were "eating the pets of the people that live there."  His running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance, also echoed the false claims "that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country” in a post written on X.  

“Haiti is the first nation in the Western hemisphere to outlaw slavery. It is the first free Black republic, and that has always been scary to the U.S. power system, this idea of self-determination by Black people,” she said. “ And so all of these rumors of things like eating pets created this boogeyman of what Haitians [are]. The Haitian immigrant population being welcomed into Ohio and welcomed into Springfield [is] revitalizing their economy; that should be a feel-good story. We have to tell the truth and be willing to reckon with the fact that racism is what's underlying the [false] stories, as well as xenophobia.” 

Braga touched on trends of disinformation that her organization has tracked down both on social media and on other platforms. According to Braga, some of the common tactics used by people spreading dissinformation include emotional language. “A lot of bad actors spreading immigration-related disinformation are using fear-mongering. They're playing at people's very real anxieties about their day-to-day lives,” she said.   

Another tactic that is often used is cherry picking. “Bad actors will take one or two cases, perhaps of a crime being committed by a migrant in the U.S. and try to frame that instance as applicable to all migrant communities,” Braga said. A third tactic shared by Braga was the false dichotomy tactic. “False dichotomies are used to present two options and they're often framed as two mutually exclusive options. Either you have this or you have that, and it leaves out all of the other potential options that they actually have,” she said.  

CALÒ News, LatiNation and Al Madrigal have partnered together to create the “Stop the Dis(Information)" campaign, which aims to combat the widespread dissemination of disinformation, hoaxes and “fake news” that in recent years have cycled through the Latino community. The campaign has generated high-quality videos that have already enhanced digital media literacy, focused in time for the 2024 election.

​​For additional information on the Diálogo Series and if you would like to donate to LMC's effort to advance an informed and highly engaged Latino community through a thriving Latino media sector, visit latinomedia.org/2024-dialogo-series.