These are the big election-related misinfo themes on Chinese-language social media
A WeChat post depicts former President Donald Trump as a victim of election fraud. A user on X states student protesters are paid actors. Chinese-language social media is rife with disinformation about the upcoming presidential election, a new report finds.
The report, shared first with NBC News, identifies the major election-related narratives that have emerged over the past year across apps highly used by Chinese Americans, including the popular China-based platform WeChat and X, formerly known as Twitter.
The study, released Monday by civil rights nonprofit group Chinese for Affirmative Action, highlights misconceptions like that the “extreme left” policies of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party are moving the U.S. toward communism, and the idea that the Biden administration opened the southern border so that undocumented immigrants could vote for Democrats.
And experts say the misinformation is spread in large part by first-generation immigrants who have little access to in-language information and are still attempting to navigate the American political system.