Latino voters targeted by abortion misinformation campaigns
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/latino-voters-targeted-abortion-misinformation-campaigns-n1245136
In the final days before the election, Spanish-language misinformation about Joe Biden's and running mate Kamala Harris' positions on abortion is specifically targeting religious Latinos on Facebook and its messaging service, WhatsApp.
Several of the memes about their positions on abortion that are circulating are false.
One meme includes a picture of a crying newborn next to photos of Biden and Harris with text in Spanish that translates: "These candidates support an abortion 5 minutes before birth and if it survives the abortion, they approve of killing the baby."
Since Sept. 29, that meme has spread across 87 posts in Facebook pages and public groups, garnering 5,900 interactions, or comments, reactions and shares, according to the Facebook-owned social media analysis tool CrowdTangle. That's even with a banner warning from Verificador, the fact-checking unit of the Peruvian newspaper La República, which Facebook has enlisted as a fact-checking partner, that it had found the content "misleading."
While it's unclear who created the false meme that Biden and Harris support drastically late-term abortions, it isn't the first time disinformation tied to religious issues has been used to target Latino communities online, said Sam Woolley, the project director for propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.
"This is part of an ongoing campaign with far-right groups associated with the Catholic Church, focusing on pulling Latinx voters to the Republican side," Woolley said, adding that he saw similar misinformation in 2016 and 2018 likewise targeting religious Latino voters around abortion.