Spanish-Language Social Media Increases Latinos’ Vulnerability to Misinformation

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A new study shows that Latinos who rely on Spanish-language social media for news are significantly more likely to believe false political narratives than those who consume English-language content. The research – published in PNAS Nexus and led by political scientists at the University of California San Diego and New York University – highlights growing concerns over misinformation targeting Spanish-speaking communities in the United States.

“Latino voters are heavily courted in U.S. elections, and there has been much speculation on the reasons behind their increase in Republican support in the 2024 Presidential contest. Understanding their news and information sources on social media, especially as it pertains to political misinformation, is an important factor to consider, ” said Marisa Abrajano, the study’s corresponding author and a professor of political science at UC San Diego.  “Our study, which we believe to be the largest of its kind to examine Latinos’ self-reported social media behaviors, finds that Spanish-speaking Latinos who access their news on social media are more vulnerable to political misinformation than those who use English-language social media.”

The research team, convened by NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics (CSMaP), surveyed more than 1,100 Latino Facebook and Instagram users in the United States. The team offered participants a small monetary incentive to join the study, and included English-dominant, bilingual and Spanish-dominant respondents. The participants were tested on their belief in seven false political narratives, including the claim that Venezuela is intentionally sending criminals to the U.S., the claim that the majority of Planned Parenthood clinics closed after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the claim that the COVID-19 vaccine makes breast milk dangerous to infants.

The results reveal that Latinos who use Spanish-language social media for their news were between 11 to 20 percentage points more likely to believe in these false stories compared to those who rely on English-language platforms. The relationship persisted even when controlling for factors such as the primary language spoken at home, and the findings remained robust even after testing for acquiescence bias, where respondents might agree with survey statements regardless of their truth.

“While there's been widespread concern about the prevalence of Spanish-language misinformation on social media, our study is the first to empirically demonstrate its impact on political knowledge among Latino communities in the United States,” said Jonathan Nagler, co-author of the paper and co-director of NYU's CSMaP. “We've established a crucial link between the consumption of Spanish-language social media and a less informed electorate. This research fills a critical gap in our understanding of how misinformation affects different linguistic communities and highlights the urgent need for more robust fact-checking and content moderation in Spanish-language social media spaces.”

Additional insights on WhatsApp and YouTube

In a related study forthcoming in the journal Political Research Quarterly, Abrajano, Nagler and colleagues show that Latino online political engagement is very similar to that of non-Hispanic whites across major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X, formerly Twitter.

WhatsApp, however, stands out as a unique space for Latino users, who engage in political conversations on the platform far more often than non-Hispanic whites. Latinos rely on WhatsApp as a daily source for sharing news, discussing politics, and staying updated, highlighting its importance in Latino political digital life.

This study, based on a survey of 2,326 U.S.-based Latinos and 769 non-Hispanic whites, also used digital trace data – information that reflects real online behaviors, such as which social media accounts people follow or what videos they watch. This data helps researchers understand not just what people self-report about their online behaviors but what they actually do.

Findings from the digital trace data showed that both Latinos and whites frequently turn to YouTube for political news, raising concerns about misinformation given YouTube’s challenges with content moderation.

Spanish-speaking Latinos were also found to engage frequently with Spanish-language political pages from Latin America, creating a unique cross-border information environment.

The combined research findings have serious implications for U.S. democracy, the authors conclude. Their work also highlights the need for additional research efforts on how Latino news consumption helps to explain their political attitudes and beliefs.

The research is part of CSMaP's Bilingual Election Monitor, a project supported by Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and NYU's Office of the Provost and Global Institute for Advanced Study.

In addition to Abrajano and Nagler, co-authors of the PNAS Nexus and PRQ studies are: Marianna Garcia from UC San Diego; Aaron Pope, formerly of CSMaP and now at the University of Copenhagen; Robert Vidigal, formerly of CSMaP and now at Vanderbilt University; and Joshua A. Tucker, co-director of CSMaP.

NYU's James Devitt and Erik Opsal contributed to the writing of this story.