How Asian and Latino voters are being targeted by disinformation ahead of the 2024 election

August 23, 2024

By Kadia Tubman

"Is the 2024 election going to happen?"

"There's going to be this new pandemic, or a new disease is going to be created in order to push mail-In ballots."

"Democrats are failing to secure the U.S. southern border in order to allow undocumented immigrants to vote for them in U.S. elections."

These are just a few of the false narratives Asian and Latino voters grapple with in a crucial election year. As communities of color make up a significant voting bloc heading into November, Asian and Latinos Americans specifically, make up the fastest growing groups of eligible 2024 voters, according to Pew Research. They also face a similar issue: language barriers that often block them from trustworthy information.

"One in three Asian Americans is limited English proficient, which means that they aren't able to use certain English language resources," Jenny Liu, a misinformation and disinformation policy manager at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, tells Scripps News.

"So when it comes to something like voting," Liu adds, "if they aren't able to go to verified or reputable news sources and get that information, they will then unfortunately turn to alternative sources and media."

False election-related narratives in Asian American communities typically start off in English before going through a "misinformation factory," Liu says.

"Usually a few days later, it then gets translated into Vietnamese, for example. And then it makes its way onto YouTube, or someone will talk about it in a video, and then it'll make its way onto a Facebook post," she says.

False information also starts off as a familiar narrative, a story or rumor someone has heard before, Roberta Braga, founder and executive director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, tells Scripps News.

"One of them, for example, was that elites are conspiring with media and social media to hide the truth from us," Braga says. "That's something called the global control narrative that we've seen spreading more and more. It usually has to do with the United Nations or the World Economic Forum. It's sort of affiliated with QAnon."

Both Braga and Liu say an intersection of topics like health, immigration and voting are being pushed ahead of the 2024 election.

Liu says there is "purposeful manipulation" behind false claims like a "new pandemic or a new disease is going to be created in order to push mail-in ballots."

This false claim creates an entryway to future disinformation about ballot fraud, Liu says. "So public health meets elections meets in the middle of this idea of fraud."

Another false narrative, that undocumented immigrants are being let into the country so they can vote in the next election.

"Immigration is a big topic that we see ahead of any election," Liu says, but now "that's being weaponized to also intersect with this idea of voting."

Both Liu and Braga stress that Asian and Latino communities aren't more susceptible to false information — they are targeted.

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