Originally posted in CBS Mornings
As November 5 approaches, anti-immigrant rhetoric and disinformation campaigns pushing false election fraud allegations are surging, including in Latino spaces online. One week out from Election Day, Roberta Braga, Founder and Executive Director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, joined CBS Mornings live in New York City to discuss what we can expect pre- and post-election.
In an interview with co-hosts Adriana Diaz and Tony Dokoupil, Braga shared how DDIA is tackling this issue through a combination of polling and narrative analysis, closely monitoring social media platforms and over 1,300 public WhatsApp groups to track disinformation.
Braga noted that, this year, much of the disinformation and misinformation targeting Latino communities is recycled content from past election cycles or foreign contexts, categorized into three main disinformation “buckets”: election fraud, anti-immigration rhetoric, and conspiracy theories that suggest efforts to suppress society. Despite these challenges, Braga highlighted some positive trends: belief in certain conspiracy narratives has decreased, signaling that people are becoming more critical and resilient in evaluating the information they consume. She also emphasized the need to assess social media business models that incentivize extremist content.
For more insights into how misinformation affects Latino communities, see DDIA’s latest September poll Toplines, and results of the March/April poll, On Disinformation, Distrust, and Democracy: A DDIA Poll of U.S. Latinos Leading Up to the 2024 Elections.