Editor’s Note: This content was first published on REDESCover - Edition 112, DDIA's weekly newsletter. Sign up and receive it every Wednesday.
When a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia early Monday, August 10, 2026, Spanish-language digital networks across Colombia and the United States instantly mobilized. Millions of users tracked real-time human tolls, organized grassroots relief, and debated political responses.
Alongside solidarity efforts, however, social media feeds and encrypted messaging apps were rapidly flooded with misinformation — including AI-generated images, weather-manipulation conspiracy theories, and false aftershock warnings.
Much like during the recent tragedy in Venezuela, DDIA's researchers followed online spaces for hours to make sense of how Latino communities (in the United States and abroad) mobilized after another massive earthquake struck the region. Find below the most important findings as of August 12, 2026.
Source: Google Search
Real-Time Trauma, Prayer, and Digital Solidarity
Within an hour of the tremor in Colombia, videos depicting collapsing structures, historic church damage, and emergency rescue operations flooded feeds across Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, and YouTube. Data collected by social listening tool NewsWhip on these platforms indicates that publications about the quake generated millions of interactions across both mainstream Hispanic news outlets and independent Spanish-language creators. And the volume of interactions reached high levels in hours.
On TikTok, for example, footage showing structural damage at the Universidad Libre in Pereira, published by news portal Latinus, reached over 2.5 million interactions within 24 hours (an average of more than 104,000 likes, shares, and comments per hour).
For U.S. Latinos maintaining ties to affected areas like Chocó, Valle del Cauca, and Risaralda, comment sections on social media posts quickly turned into informal crisis boards. Users exchanged welfare checks, searched for missing relatives, and coordinated relief efforts. But the content of the initial hours fell mostly into one of the following categories:
Spiritual Mobilization, with faith institutions such as Delaware-based Catholic site BibliaTodo and Honduran pastor Guillermo Maldonado mobilizing hundreds of thousands of interactions through calls for prayer.
Source: NewsWhip
Humanitarian Support, with influencers across political spectra amplifying official and grassroots relief. Progressive creator Carlos Eduardo Espina and El Salvador’s right-leaning President Nayib Bukele, for example, highlighted emergency assistance, drawing widespread community support.
Source: NewsWhip
The Political Conversation
Later on, the Spanish-language conversation mostly shifted into a political debate and a discussion about local emergency measures.
National & Local Responses, led by Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella, drove high levels of engagement. His administration declared a state of national disaster, and Espriella suspended his agenda to oversee operations in the Pacific region. In Cali, where over 20 buildings collapsed, Mayor Alejandro Eder enacted a citywide curfew to prevent looting, which generated some criticism.
International Aid came right after, with military deployments and international support receiving a positive online response. Statements from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sparked some debate about Colombia's long-term recovery capacity.
Disinformation Surge: AI Visuals, Conspiracies, and Fake Warnings
Between August 10 and 11, Spanish-speaking fact-checkers debunked emerging falsehoods that could fit into three main buckets:
Manipulated Media and AI: A widely shared photo claiming Cali’s Monumento a la Resistencia had collapsed, for example, was proven to be AI-generated. Out-of-context video clips, such as footage purportedly showing construction workers clinging to steel bars and also surged, just like a video falsely labeled as a school during the quake.
Conspiracy Theories: Viral claims attempted to link the earthquake to HAARP, falsely alleging this high-power atmospheric research facility based in Alaska could have been used for weather manipulation.
False Aftershock Timelines: Finally, DDIA researchers and fact-checkers detected misleading posts circulating online with false time predictions for impending aftershocks. Seismologists emphasize that while aftershocks occur, exact times and magnitudes cannot be predicted in advance.
Source: Newtral (Spain)
WhatsApp and Telegram Watch: Crisis Hubs vs. Automated Messaging Networks
Encrypted messaging channels on WhatsApp and Telegram served as ground-zero crisis hubs for Latinos all over the world, but particularly around the epicenter of the quake, in San José del Palmar. Key messaging trends analyzed via data collected by Open Measures on public spaces indicate that the apps were used for different purposes in the first 24 hours after the quake:
Infrastructure Tracking: WhatsApp and Telegram users documented, for example, severe damage at Manizales’ Cathedral Basílica Metropolitana, the evacuation of Cali’s ValleSalud Clinic, and the operational shutdown of seven regional airports.
Resource Sharing: App users also shared search portals such as colombiatebusca.com alongside reports of $15.5 million in U.S. assistance and rescue clips, including 16 passengers trapped in Pereira’s Megacable.
But DDIA researchers also observed what could be automated bot activity flooding WhatsApp and Telegram chats.
Duplicate news headlines with tracking links about the disaster in Colombia were copied up to 16 times across groups to farm ad traffic. Complex disinformation campaigns, like the ones seen on open social media, also pushed claims of weather control, Russian submarine detonations, and political shifts as a potential reason for the quake.
Monument to Resistance: How Political Polarization Capitalized on Post-Disaster Chaos and Sparked a Hoax
Standing 9.5 meters tall in Cali's Puerto Rellena sector (renamed Puerto Resistencia), the "Monumento a la Resistencia" features a massive left forearm and fist clutching a plaque inscribed with a single word: "Resiste." Built during the 2021 National Strike (Paro Nacional) in Colombia, the monument serves as a prominent landmark honoring social mobilization and the victims of police violence.
In the chaotic aftermath of the recent earthquake in Colombia, a viral hoax claimed this central symbol of the country's leftist movement had been destroyed. The image was fake. The monument remains standing.
But an analysis of dozens of Facebook and Instagram posts reveals that the false narrative was heavily driven by Colombia's political right, particularly critics of former President Gustavo Petro, in the first hours after the quake.
Following the recent electoral victory of right-wing leader Abelardo de la Espriella — part of a broader conservative wave sweeping the Americas — opponents of the former administration seized on the fabricated image to push a narrative that the Colombian left had collapsed "for good".
Yet, user interactions tell a different story. Comments left across several publications reviewed by DDIA show a swift public backlash: users actively debunked the image, shared fact-checks, and called out political actors for exploiting human suffering for partisan gain. Some of these images are available below:
