Misinformation targeting Latino communities became a powerful tool during the 2020 election. As falsehoods continue to spread regarding health information like the coronavirus vaccine, Latino groups are mobilizing to combat this dangerous messaging. Last month, we shared a letter signed by dozens of Florida leaders and Latino groups demanding that Spanish media cease the spread of unchecked or debunked misinformation. Now, the former Democratic National Committee Chairman and two other national organizations have launched a $22 million “Latino Anti-Disinformation Lab” campaign to ramp up the efforts nationally.
Former DNC Chairman Tom Perez, founding president of Voto Latino Maria Teresa Kumar, and Media Matters’ Angelo Carusone will co-chair the project, which will officially launch this week. When Kumar’s mother, who runs an elder care facility in Northern California, informed her that she would be foregoing her Covid-19 vaccine because of information she had received that portrayed the vaccine as unsafe for human use, Kumar saw the same pattern she noticed during the last elections, when misinformation saturated Whatsapp groups, social media content, and even traditional media aimed at Spanish communities. She decided to embark on this effort to combat campaigns like the one targeting her mother, she told NBC News.
“The 2020 election showed us that the greatest obstacle to our thriving democracy is having people understand and navigate truth. It has come down to a matter of literally life and death when disinformation is targeting a community to the point that they don’t take care of themselves and don’t get vaccinated,” she said.
The Latino Anti-Disinformation Lab will aim to identify misinformation, come up with the most effective and persuasive way to respond, and launch response communication campaigns to reach Hispanic audiences. Media Matters will assign a dozen staff members to the project, who will handle the monitoring of television, radio, and social media forums. Voto Latino will then work on the response communication campaigns, using its network of Spanish-speaking surrogates.
The project will start off with a coronavirus disinformation campaign. Carusone explained how the coronavirus pandemic and vaccine often involve a narrative connecting malicious forces to the Democratic Party and the concocted elixir that will be harmful to those injected with it. “There are bad actors that go into multiple groups and drop false memes and narratives,” he said. As a result, Hispanic communities are becoming less trusting of the coronavirus vaccine, which could become dangerous in the fight against the pandemic. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 46 percent of white adults said they would definitely get vaccinated, and only 36 percent of Hispanic adults said the same. Additionally, 18 percent of Hispanic adults said they would definitely not get vaccinated.
Beyond coronavirus misinformation, the ultimate goal of the lab is to fight right-wing false messaging before the congressional midterms. As the Latino population grows in the United States, their voting patterns will become increasingly decisive. During the 2020 election, for example, former President Trump was able to peddle misinformation and falsehoods to South Florida Latinos to his advantage in such a degree that it helped him carry the state. Kumar and Carusone pointed out how disinformation campaigns, like that Democrats were illegally harvesting ballots and that Biden supported “defunding the police,” were both rampant and consequential among these communities.
“Clearly what we saw was not just some organic misinformation bubbling up. The right recognized the opportunity. They recognized there’s a value with flooding the zone in these communities with lies and misinformation,” Carusone said. The fight against misinformation is a long and uncharted one, but campaigns like the Latino Anti-Disinformation Lab can begin to make all the difference among our communities.