It is notorious and it is everywhere— on WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, AM radio stations, and some media outlets. From pseudoscience to conspiracy theories, from fake news to the open denial of reality, disinformation in Spanish is spreading like wildfire. Yet the tech giants are not doing enough to stop this wildfire that is affecting our democracy.
Weeks before the start of elections season, this issue is especially crucial because disinformation is used as a propaganda tool by certain groups in power. These groups take advantage of vulnerable Latinos, deceive them, and ultimately persuade them to go against their own interests and those of their families. What is the reason for this?
Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, wrote an in-depth article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the article he points to three possible factors:
An ecosystem for misinformation
The wildest theories and the construction of fantasy worlds have gained unusual momentum in recent months, as the information consumption habits of Latinos are changing.
According to a Nielsen report, Latinos spend more time on social media apps and messaging services— where misinformation can go viral—than they do on traditional media.
Instagram reaches 69% of Latinos ages 18-23, compared to 53% of others age 18 and older in the country. Snapchat reaches 50% of Latino young adults, compared to 29% of the general population. Likewise, Latinos use WhatsApp 27% more than the rest of the population.
The problem, Nyhan points out, is that social media has become a powerful megaphone for fabricators of disinformation.
The Nielsen company highlights that 28% of news websites where Latinos constitute 20% of the audience had content marked as biased, extremely biased, or mixed.
Confirmation bias and group bias
If you’re looking for a crazy idea, no matter how extreme, chances are you’ll find at least one website that supports this idea. Here is the problem for many home “researchers”: their goal is not to find verified information that allows them to see an objective point of view on a subject, but to find information that makes them “right,” regardless of the source. This is part of what is known in psychology as confirmation bias.
Nyhan also explains how certain social conditions lead people to feel a greater need to hold a belief linked to their social identity. In short, if a person’s belief is tied to their group identity (political party, language, country of origin, religion) these ideas will be defended as a way to validate their connection, regardless of whether they are true or not.
Disinformation “influencers”
Another issue that Nyhan highlights is the emergence of high-profile public figures who encourage their followers to be wary of anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their belief system, although this implies a blatant denial of reality.
What can we do?
We cannot give up. We must demand that companies like Google and Meta improve the algorithms for fact-checking information in Spanish and hire more Spanish-speaking employees to handle monitoring these disinformation campaigns.
Likewise, we need to be cautious about the information we consume, and we should rely on media outlets that are serious about seeking objective and verified information, as we do at La Noticia.