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How young Latinos' TV and online habits offer political clues for 2022



Greetings from your co-host Leah Askarinam. Blake Hounshell is off this week. We have an item tonight from our colleague Jazmine Ulloa, who reports on a new analysis of young Latinos’ media habits.

Online disinformation hit Latino communities hard ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

It came in the form of videos, tweets and WhatsApp messages, YouTube videos and the rants of Spanish-language radio hosts. It included false reports of widespread violence on the streets of Democratic cities after the murder of George Floyd, QAnon conspiracy theories, and overblown claims of terrorists and criminals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

As the most egregious material spread online — and in the private text chains of young Latinos’ tías and tíos — organizers with United We Dream Action, an immigrant rights organization founded and led by young immigrants, jumped into the fray. The group trained members to provide accurate information to their families and friends and create shareable content across social media platforms that was meant to dispel anti-immigrant and anti-Black narratives.

Now, with the 2022 midterms months away and both parties scrambling for the votes of one of the most crucial swing groups in American politics, the organization released a report today that more deeply explores Latinos’ online engagement with material about immigration. Long exploited by bad actors on the web, the contentious issue is widely expected to be pivotal in elections across the country.

The immigrant advocacy network teamed up with Harmony Labs, a nonprofit research group in New York, to study the television and online consumption habits of more than 20,000 Latinos nationwide who agreed to share their data from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, 2021. Latinos over 36 were more likely to encounter polarizing anti-immigrant narratives than other cohorts, the analysis found, mainly through right-wing news sites, television and YouTube.

It also found an interesting gender divide among younger Latinos.

Latinas ages 18 to 35 drew from a much wider variety of news and entertainment sources than their older counterparts, the analysis found, and were more likely to seek out stories not just about immigration policy but also about immigrants and the immigrant experience.

Their search queries and content consumption were curious and community-driven, reflecting “a desire to understand and engage with the people and world around them,” according to the findings.

But Latino men in the same age cohort were far different. Those surveyed tended to inhabit “a very insular, virtual world,” the researchers said. Many young Latino men spent much of their time online engaging with anime and fantasy gaming, and did not absorb much media about immigration or immigrants at all, either positive or negative. When they did consume immigration content, it tended to be about policy and stemmed from conservative-leaning sources.

GameStop stocks and Covid news

Beyond that, their news consumption choices tended to be more individualistic and entrepreneurial. Of 45,000 articles read by Latinos in the first nine months of 2021, only two topics appeared to grab the attention of large numbers of young Latino men: the amateurs who drove up the stock price of GameStop, and Covid-related school closures.

Both young Latinos and Latinas demonstrated less interest in politics, and for the young men, the top “political” personalities were influencers who discuss a broad variety of cultural topics and fall across the political spectrum: Philip DeFranco, Joe Rogan and Mr. Beast.

Read More About U.S. Immigration

New Asylum Policy: The Biden administration has finalized a plan that would radically change the process for people seeking asylum in the United States allowing them to avoid overburdened immigration judges.Undocumented Immigrants: As it ends contracts and looks to reduce bed capacity at detention facilities, the government appears to be moving away from incarcerations.Trump-Era Policies: President Biden promised to unravel his predecessor’s harsh immigration rules. But in court, his administration has been fighting to keep some restrictions in place.A Closed Door: More than 40,000 Afghan allies who didn’t get on a U.S. evacuation flight applied for emergency entry. Most have been denied.The vacuum of political information for young Latino men, coupled with their desire for economic stability and penchant for individualism, is likely to leave that group more susceptible to right-wing anti-immigrant narratives and disinformation in the future, the groups concluded.

This uniquely positions young Latino men for negative arguments “that there isn’t enough for them and that someone else is taking their opportunities,” said Juanita Monsalve, the senior

By: Jazmine Ulloa
Title: How Young Latinos’ Online and TV Habits Offer Political Clues for 2022
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/04/12/us/politics/latinos-voters-midterms.html
Published Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2022 23:03:07 +0000

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