Latino Voters Bombarded by Abortion Misinformation
Democratic Party Caucus officials count ballots after polling places closed during the first ever New Mexico caucus February 3, 2004 in Gallup, New Mexico. The Gallup area has a large number of Native Americans and Hispanic voters. Douglas Tesner/Getty Images

Latino voters are being targeted by misinformation about Democrats' bets Joe Biden's and Kamala Harris' position on abortion.

The misinformation is specifically being set on Facebook and its messaging service, WhatsApp.

Many memes about Harris' position on abortion that are being circulated on those social media platforms are false.

One meme shows a picture of a crying newborn next to images of Biden and Harris with a Spanish caption that says, "these candidates support an abortion 5 minutes before birth and if it survives the abortion, they approve of killing the baby."

The meme has circulated across 87 posts in Facebook pages and public groups, with an interaction of 5,900, which includes comments, reactions, and shares.

Facebook fact-checks misleading posts

This was since Sept. 29 based on Facebook's social media analysis tool CrowdTangle, according to an NBC News report.

Facebook has also enlisted Verificador as its fact-checking partner. Verificador found the circulating content to be misleading.

Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin's project director for propaganda research, Sam Woolley, said this is not the first time that disinformation linked to religious issues has been used to target Latino communities online.

In addition, it is still unclear who created the false meme on Biden and Harris' stance on late-term abortions.

"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 was quoted in an NBC News report.

He added that he saw similar misinformation back in 2016 and 2018, which was also targeting religious Latino votes about abortion.

However, Pew Research Center showed that Latino voters are accounting for the largest group of minorities in the country, making it a crucial one for votes.

In addition, Latino communities are usually found in crucial battleground states that usually dictate the winner of an election.

These states are Texas, Florida, and Arizona. Democrats have expressed concerns throughout their campaign about disinformation.

The political party said that this disinformation was affecting the Latino voters, particularly in Florida.

FirstDraft's senior investigative researcher, Jamie Longoria, said that misinformation on abortion has started to spread online this year.

The growing popularity of messaging platforms like WhatsApp among immigrants has played a role.

Black Voters

Aside from the Latino community, Black voters are also being targeted by Russian disinformation campaigns.

Experts said that the tactic might be working, according to a Yahoo News report.

This was based on a Senate report from 2019, showing that Russian operatives working for the Internet Research Agency used social media posts with an emphasis on race.

The technique was done through the use of Facebook pages, Instagram posts, and Twitter posts.

The campaign aims to encourage apathy among Black voters and discourage them from voting.

An NPR report said that there has been posting of memes, with a narrative saying that there is no point in participating.

These tactics were used by Russians on social media four years ago when Russian operatives emphasized America's racial divisions.

A Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference said that no single group of Americans was targeted by the information operatives.

"By far, race and related issues were the preferred targets of the information warfare campaign designed to divide the country in 2016," the report said.