05 Information Disorder: The Disturbing Rise of Political Misinformation Influencers | Lam Thuy Vo

“Fake news,” conspiracy theories, and click-bait are no stranger to all our Internet feeds. When we spot it, we may block an account or kindly refer a relative to a more reputable source. But what about the misinformation we can’t even see? Specifically, content in other languages, created for online communities we can’t possibly access?

For the relatively small community of Vietnamese-speaking immigrants in the U.S., there are almost no reliable media outlets to serve news in their native language. And strange entities have sprouted up to fill the void, often mixing far-right conspiracies with legitimate news to create “information disorder,” a particularly insidious brand of propaganda.

This week on INFLUENCE, investigative data journalist and journalism professor Lam Thuy Vo joins Matt to discuss the complexities of consuming a balanced news diet in the Vietnamese-American community. She has written numerous pieces for The Markup (a non-profit tech journalism site) about the “Languages of Misinformation,” and a mysterious YouTuber who produces a shocking amount of very dubious Vietnamese-language “news.” Who is she? Who is behind her channel? And what’s the goal?

Lam also profiles a heroic Vietnamese-American grandmother who took it upon herself to translate reputable news sources to combat the misinformation she was seeing in her community’s social media bubbles. These forces paint a picture of a very complicated voting block that – if misinformed by the Internet – can significantly impact local and national elections.

Their wide-ranging discussion goes deep on what it means to be media literate in a world of deepfakes, AI, and algorithms that care very little for languages that are not English.

Read Lam’s extraordinary work here: https://themarkup.org/languages-of-misinformation/2024/05/22/the-inside-story-of-the-youtube-influencer-who-peddles-misinformation-to-vietnamese-communities

https://themarkup.org/people/lam-thuy-vo

And follow her here: https://x.com/lamthuyvo

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