AUSTIN, Texas — Each video that spews propaganda on Alice Yi’s WeChat feed reminds her of the life she fled four decades ago.
In her native China, the government controlled her family’s land, and her mother lost a job merely because a sister lived in neighboring rival Taiwan. It was useless to speak out, Yi said, because the Communist Party and its propaganda machine could turn opponents to “dust.”
Worse, she recalled, tears welling in her eyes: “You’ll be disappeared.”
She dreamed of a life far away – to witness a democracy free of deceptive and dangerous narratives. Encouraged by her father, Yi came to the United States in 1981 to attend college, beginning a decadeslong journey to amplify the voices of other immigrants.
Today, as co-founder of one of the largest Asian American networks in Texas, she is among a legion of advocates across the United States combating disinformation that singles out immigrant communities and people of color.
“Democracy means you will have a voice,” Yi said. “We do need to speak out and speak loud.”
Amid the growth of social media, a decline in traditional news outlets and advancing technology that makes it easier to fool people with “fake news,” disinformation has surged in the U.S. and beyond and become an especially powerful threat during election years.
Experts say immigrant communities and people of color are particular targets, as bad actors exploit long-held political fears and ideologies and find these voters where they congregate – on free messaging apps such as WeChat and WhatsApp.
These bad actors’ goal is to undermine the growing population and power of immigrants and to further disenfranchise groups that already face barriers to participating in democracy.
“Disinformation campaigns are always targeted by nature,” said Kristy Roschke, an expert on media literacy and misinformation at Arizona State University. These campaigns victimize people based on “race, ethnicity, geography, socioeconomic status,” she said.
“Who controls the narrative controls the power,” added Anneshia Hardy, executive director of Alabama Values, which fights disinformation aimed at Black voters. “We’re seeing each day that information is being weaponized against some of the most vulnerable communities.”
Credit: Eliana Alzate
Credit: Eliana Alzate
Yi said the stream of disinformation in her WeChat feed is relentless. One video, from a China-based user, claimed “rich and politically unprotected” Chinese Americans face “malicious fines” aimed at stripping them of their wealth to help alleviate financial woes in the U.S.
Yi’s group and other organizations are responding with new fact-checking efforts, workshops, online seminars and in-person gatherings, often using the language the audience is most comfortable speaking.
“We all emigrate from our homeland, with no opportunity (there) for us to choose the leader,” Yi said. “Our mentality is not used to the democracy process, so we do need somebody to come in and educate them.”
For two decades, Asian Americans have been the fastest-growing voter population in the U.S. That population has increased by 15% just since 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2022, California had the highest number of eligible voters who were Asian, followed by New York and then Texas, which was home to 1.1 million potential Asian voters.
Latinos, expected to be the largest demographic in the U.S. by 2050, constitute the second fastest-growing group of eligible voters, with an increase of 12% since 2020. Black eligible voters, long a target of disinformation and suppression, have increased by 7% since 2020, according to Pew.
These groups tend to lean Democratic rather than Republican, research shows, and that’s led to an increase in “racialized disinformation,” coming from the right, that seeks to keep these voters from the polls and drive a wedge between different communities of color.
Jaime Longoria is manager of research and training for the Disinfo Defense League, which launched ahead of the contentious 2020 presidential election. The group’s national network brings together advocates from different racial and ethnic backgrounds to track and respond to targeted disinformation.
“A lot of the strategies that are being used on the right happen to use a lot of fearmongering, a lot of scapegoating,” Longoria said, pointing to one narrative he’s seen circulated: that if immigration continues to rise, Black communities will be ignored and lose important resources.
“Wedge issues are the type of issues that are meant to drive division among specific groups,” he said. “It’s more about the emotion behind the messaging … because mis- and disinformation co-opts your emotions to make you believe different things or act in a specific way.”
During the 2022 midterm elections, Asian Americans in Raleigh, North Carolina, received mailers claiming an executive order President Joe Biden instituted to advance equity for marginalized groups would instead discriminate against Asian and white people.
That, said Jimmy Patel-Nguyen, communications director for North Carolina Asian Americans Together, was a “blatant attempt to try to subvert our power and our influence in these elections (and) to drive a wedge between us and other communities.”
To address ambiguities and misconceptions about the election process, Patel-Nguyen’s group distributes informational graphics translated into different languages and operates a multilingual hotline voters can call to get trusted information in their primary language.
Credit: Eliana Alzate
Credit: Eliana Alzate
Other organizations have launched multilingual fact-checking operations to fight disinformation.
In 2022, after a spike in disinformation involving China and COVID-19, the civil rights group Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) launched PiYaoBa, a fact-checking website produced in Chinese that aims to counter disinformation on WeChat and other platforms.
Jinxia Niu, program manager for digital engagement at CAA, said while English fact-checking outlets have been around for years, very few efforts focus on people with limited or no English proficiency.
“We realized that we have to … start our own program to combat disinformation,” she said, adding that the organization runs several of its own channels on WeChat, which Niu calls “virtual Chinatown.”
“We have to be in the virtual Chinatown and uplift our voice,” she said.
Factchequeado partners with dozens of media outlets to distribute explainer videos and fact-checking analyses in English and Spanish. Co-founder Laura Zommer said the organization wants to help people understand the electoral system, not direct them to a specific political party.
In January, the group spotlighted false narratives expected to arise this election year involving Latino communities, such as claims that noncitizen immigrants could try to vote fraudulently. Factchequeado’s website has a page dedicated to quashing that issue.
“What we are doing is a kind of ‘prebunking’ strategy,” Zommer said – in other words, combating disinformation before it gains traction. The group also offers a free “fact checks of the week” newsletter and solicits tips about false content on WhatsApp.
Other organizations have similar tip lines for misinformation, while Hardy’s group, Alabama Values, is beta-testing an app full of data, polls and other information to fight deceptive content.
Viet Fact Check, a project of the Progressive Vietnamese American Organization, provides online fact checks in English and Vietnamese, a newsletter and, in some places, in-person workshops where participants across generations learn how to identify disinformation.
Managing Editor Saoli Nguyen said she’s seen how individuals’ experiences and ideologies can influence how they digest information and determine whether they believe it.
When college protesters in the U.S. rallied for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas conflict, Vietnamese social media influencers sought support for Palestinians by referencing past American interventions in Asia and claiming the U.S. puts “power and wealth over human life.”
Nguyen recalled a reader messaging Viet Fact Check about those claims. That person’s perception of the U.S. was as the “good guy” who battled communism alongside South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
“With that narrative comes the inherent belief that whoever the U.S. sides with is also the good guy and we should be supporting them,” Nguyen said. “The person who messaged us was just like, ‘I don’t know what to believe anymore.’”
Nguyen said voters should be persistent in verifying political news and seeking out accurate information. But she also offered a word of caution: “The truth is not always going to be convenient.”
Family influence also can affect how immigrant communities and people of color process information.
Credit: Eliana Alzate
Credit: Eliana Alzate
Angela Lim co-wrote a study about misinformation among Filipinos for a propaganda research lab housed at the University of Texas at Austin. She found that many families – her own included – share information via group chats on platforms such as Facebook Messenger.
However, Lim’s research found that Filipinos often don’t speak up when something false is shared, because keeping the peace is an important cultural value.
“With politics,” she said, “we’re often told to not rock the boat or to just lay low. That’s also something that my parents emphasized to us.”
In Austin, Alice Yi, co-founder of Asian Texans for Justice, regularly organizes conversations among community leaders to foster anti-disinformation efforts, at times reserving a room at the back of a French cafe near her home.
Credit: Eliana Alzate
Credit: Eliana Alzate
One recent day, she sat down at a table with Hatem Natsheh, a community organizer and advocate for Arab Americans, Muslims and Palestinians; Becca DeFelice, head of a group working to elect more women from diverse backgrounds; and Azra Siddiqi, founder of a nonprofit working to increase civic engagement among South Asians in Texas.
One by one, they talked about their experience with disinformation – both online and via the talking points and social media accounts of some politicians.
Natsheh has long fended off disinformation about Muslims and Arabs, which worsened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. “They will come for us first, but they will never stop,” he said. “They’re going to continue going after the Latinos, the African American, the Asian American.”
Siddiqi, founder and president of WiseUp TX, said her group has created voter information videos in different South Asian languages and disseminated them in WhatsApp groups. But she noted disinformation doesn’t only circulate online.
Credit: Eliana Alzate
Credit: Eliana Alzate
She pointed to the rhetoric surrounding a 2017 law that restricts the application of “foreign laws” in the state. The measure is widely considered an anti-Muslim effort intended to stop the supposed influence of Islam in U.S. courts. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremism, found about 200 similar measures have been proposed in states since 2010.
Just this year, a Texas congressman railed on the floor of the U.S. House about “a massive Muslim takeover” in the United Kingdom and his worries that Islamic beliefs might be “forced upon the American people.”
Others, including the ACLU of Texas, say political leaders use mis- and disinformation to rally support for anti-immigration efforts such as Operation Lone Star, an $11 billion border security initiative Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched in 2021.
Texas Republicans, Siddiqi said, have “built their platform off of fear. … But I will say that the Democrats have been equally disappointing.”
She added, “It gets exhausting, because I feel that we’re consistently dehumanized.”
At 67, Yi refuses to surrender to the onslaught. She said she’ll continue to combat lies and propaganda, battling for the ideal she dreamed of when she first arrived in America.
Back then, she said, “I did not feel discriminated against. Not at all.” But in the past 10 years, “I feel more and more like I don’t belong. People yell at me, ‘Go home!’ People treat me as a foreigner, even (though) I have been here for 40-some years.”
Credit: Eliana Alzate
Credit: Eliana Alzate
That has her fearful for the next generation.
“My son (and) my grandson will carry our family last name. They will forever (be) ‘foreigner’ to those people if we don’t fight today,” said Yi, adding that when she one day looks back on her life, she wants to be able to close her eyes without thinking, “I regret I didn’t do anything.”
She said she wants to know, deep down, that “I fought for democracy.”
News21 reporters Samantha Grove and Jordan Moore contributed to this story. This report is part of “Fractured,” an examination of the state of American democracy produced by Carnegie-Knight News21. For more stories, visit https://fractured.news21.com/.
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