How right-wing immigration misinformation is reaching Spanish-language speakers
Researchers found most Spanish-language immigration misinformation seems to largely mirror the falsehoods spread by right-wing media outlets in English.
Most of the Spanish-language misinformation about immigration that Latinos see on social media or listen to on the radio seems to largely mirror the falsehoods spread by right-wing media outlets in English, according to two groups tracking misinformation in Spanish.
Researchers monitoring Spanish-language misinformation found that anti-immigrant rhetoric and false narratives increased as coverage of the Senate’s border security and foreign aid bill gained traction in recent weeks. Misinformation and falsehoods continued to cross over into Spanish even after the border security provisions that would have funded federal immigration agencies to ramp up detention and deportation efforts were removed from the bipartisan legislation, leaving behind just the provisions concerning aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
During the weeks in which the bill was being debated, researchers noticed a surge in posts spreading anti-immigrant narratives such as the “great replacement” theory, which posits that Democrats encourage immigration as part of a conspiracy to wipe out the white race, according to Randy Abreu, policy counsel at the National Hispanic Media Coalition, a Latino media advocacy nonprofit. In general, misinformation broadly distorts facts to present false or inaccurate information.
“We may only be looking at a tip of an iceberg ... This is concerning,” he told NBC News. At the nonprofit, Abreu leads the Spanish Language Disinformation Coalition, which is made up of at least six organizations that do general monitoring of misinformation in Spanish.
Sergio Muñoz, vice president of research and policy at Media Matters, a left-leaning nonprofit media watchdog founded by political consultant David Brock, also leads a team of researchers who follow the opposing immigration narratives in both English and Spanish.
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