Ali Noorani [00:00:18] This week, the growing challenge of misinformation and immigrant communities and what we need to do about it.
Valentina Pereda [00:00:24] Nobody has to say you are the one that is legitimate to give me the news. Anyone can take that upon themselves. The time that we live in is it doesn’t matter what the truth is, if the lie sounds more appealing. We can no longer operate with a mindset that if we tell the truth and people are going to listen because it’s the truth. Now we say, well, we got to tell the truth, but how are we going to tell it? And not only how are we going to tell, who is going to tell it?
Ali Noorani [00:00:47] From the National Immigration Forum, I’m Ali Noorani. And this is only in America. Last week, we touched on the importance of prioritizing vulnerable communities in the vaccine rollout and how immigrant health is critical to public health, but ensuring access is only one piece of the puzzle. Getting a handle on the pandemic and the devastation it has brought to marginalized groups will also mean combating misinformation around pandemic precautions, health care, access and vaccine safety. This past year, more and more attention has been brought to the spread of misinformation via social media and how it’s given power to a host of conspiracy theories. But while much of the reporting and research on misinformation has been focused on how it plays out for white, English speaking Americans, misinformation can spread just as rapidly in Spanish speaking and other immigrant communities. And as my guest today points out, non English misinformation just is not being tracked as thoroughly, meaning its impact is less understood. In the midst of a global pandemic, the stakes are incredibly high. At a time of desperation and hardship, people want answers. And if we aren’t making sure communities get those answers, conspiracy theories can easily fill that space. So how do we amplify and create the space for voices to combat this misinformation? How can we rethink community engagement in a way that builds trust and communicates the facts?
Underwriting [00:02:43] Support for the National Immigration Forum comes from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement and strengthening international peace and security and from Humanity United. When humanity is united, we can bring a powerful force for human dignity.
Ali Noorani [00:03:08] My guest this week is Valentina Pereda. Valentina is a communications expert and documentary filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She covers security and migration, misinformation in the Latino community, political polarization and Northern Triangle geopolitics. After a career in political communications, Valentina worked in video journalism in El Salvador before turning to research on misinformation in Spanish language and Latino spaces. Recently, she worked with local community voices in Colorado to produce public service announcements with accurate medical information about the vaccine and covid-19. We’ll post these in the episode description and you can also find them at ImmigrationForum.org/podcast. Valentina told me about how she got involved in tracking misinformation, why it’s so powerful and the steps that we can take to combat it. Valentina, thank you so much for joining. I really, really appreciate this and just really, really excited to get a sense of what you’re thinking, what you’re seeing. But, you know, learning from everything that you’ve done. So thank you.
Valentina Pereda [00:04:09] Of course. Thank you. I’m very happy to be here.
Valentina Pereda [00:04:12] So before we jump into the topic of the day, tell me a little bit about yourself. Where you grew up? What have you done with your life to get you to this fine place? The Only in America podcast?
Valentina Pereda [00:04:22] Wow, what an interesting question. I think I have an interesting life story like all of us think we do. But I am the child of an immigrant. I was born in New York to an undocumented immigrant mother. She was single. And so, you know, we just grew up in the tri state area in Connecticut between New York and Connecticut. And my mother was always undocumented. I never knew that she was undocumented until when I was 14 years old. We had to go back to Venezuela. We always went to Venezuela in the summer. So that’s where my my mother’s family always went. And so when I was 14, we had to go back because my grandfather had a stroke. He was very, very sick. And I remember she woke me up one day, I was 13 or 14, she woke me up and she’s like, well, I guess we’re going to stay in Venezuela. And I said, What? What are you talking about? We’re going to stay here. And then she’s like, so they didn’t accept my visa. They didn’t renew my visa because it’s been expired so long at that point. And so, at that moment I learned that she was undocumented and it really flipped my whole world upside down because I just didn’t- you don’t understand. You’re like, wait, but you work and you you pay taxes and all these make no sense. So that really started the whole advocacy for interest on immigration issues. So my mom and I were separated for over a year. I went back to the US to live with an aunt and she stayed in Venezuela and that was very transformative for me. That year, I had just gotten accepted into LaGuardia School of Performing Arts in New York City, the famous “Fame” school. You know, my track was always in the arts, like that was always my dream. And then when this thing happened at 13, like my whole life, mission shifted and I started getting more into immigration advocacy, which is why in high school I was an activist in college and then I went into the DNC and Obama world. I really believe that that was the best way to affect change. And I think it was an interesting experience working. You know, I worked in the campaign, I worked with the DNC. I worked and ended up working at the White House, doing communications there. And I really was able to see from the inside how a lot of these decisions were made. A lot of the you know, it just was really hard for me to understand why can they just do the right thing? And then being on the inside, seeing all the politics and the interest and all this stuff, it was just- it was a lot for me. And in 2016, I was doing coms for Hillary in Florida. I was her press secretary there, and I really told myself, this is my last shot. If we don’t win this, then I think I’m just going to like try to figure out how to do this in a different way, and I started joking to my colleagues. I said, if we lose, I’m going to move towards El Salvador and I’m going to do video journalism. Because when I was at the White House, you know, so much of what we did on the immigration front was, you know, the belief was that a lot of this was due to the gangs. And I really wanted to understand that. And again, like I said, it started as a joke. And then I ended up- and Trump won and I went and I followed my word. And I was I lived in El Salvador, and I lived throughout Central America, El Salvador, Honduras from the end of 2016 until 2020 when the pandemic hit. And then I came back to the US, and I’d been out of the country at that point for about three years. And when I came back, I saw my family change completely. My family was very pro Obama, big time Democrats. You know, my mom had just become a citizen. She was very excited to vote for Obama and such. And so coming back from Central America and seeing my family shift to pro Trump, it was just a shock. And I had already been tracking misinformation sort of since 2016, because when I was press secretary for the campaign in 2016, I remember seeing what was happening in social media and then really seeing what was happening on the ground in Florida and how at odds that was with what our data team was telling us, what the polls were saying, for example, right? I remember a data director days before the election, he was like, we’re looking great. Like, you know, independents are voting in hordes, like we got this and dah, dah, dah . And I was like and I asked him, I said, are you sure? Because I’m seeing just such different sentiment. It just makes no sense with such a wide disconnect. And he said, we’re absolutely sure. In fact, I remember Robby Mook and I forgot who else they did a call to the press maybe like two days before saying how confident they were going into the election. And I know you have to do that, you know, to get enthusiasm going and stuff like that. But, you know, then what happened, happened. And at that moment, I knew that the way we were doing- the way I was doing communications, mind you had been doing communications at the highest level you can imagine, the way I’d been doing communications, at least for the people that I was trying to communicate to, which in my case has always been the Latino community or Spanish speaking immigrants, it was wrong. It was outdated. It was completely outdated. So I already knew in 2016 that was happening. The past three years I’d been in Central America covering gangs and migration. There I was seeing how Nayib Bukele, who is now the president of El Salvador, was already using sort of troll farms and misinformation to attack his opponents, to attack journalists in San Salvador at the time. So I was already seeing this thing. And then when I came back and I saw my family, I was just shocked. I was like, wow, this is really gotten out of control. And so I started, you know, I’m a curious person. What led me to the gangs has led me down to the rabbit hole of YouTube. From the gangs, from the White House to the gangs to youtube that’s my life trajectory. So I started looking at YouTube and I was very drawn to this particular page that my family was following called Informativo 24/7, this woman called Sandra Violencia. This is last year, and I was just blown away. I mean, blown away by the lies, by the rhetoric. But it was said in such a passionate way that my family was hooked and I saw how they were just listening to YouTube. Almost like 24 hours a day. I mean, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. CNN was kind of on the background, CNN en Espanol. And then when they would hear what CNN en Espanol was saying, they would be like, God, CNN is so corrupt, like they’re such a marista. So now my family was not even believing CNN. And so that’s what got me to this podcast today. During the George Floyd protests, it was very preoccupying to see anti Black Lives Matter rhetoric on these YouTube pages. And mind you, a lot of immigrants, we come from violent countries, high crime countries. So the message that these rioters are going to come and break into your house and do whatever is very, very appealing to immigrants.
Ali Noorani [00:11:16] Why do you think, in mainstream press, there’s just very little recognition of this problem, digital platforms being pathways for misinformation?
Valentina Pereda [00:11:26] You know, I think the mainstream press is starting to pick up to it. During the election and actually dating back a little bit during the George Floyd protests, I did see some great articles. Patty Mazzei at The New York Times has been covering misinformation in the Latino community, so I have seen some some reporting. Why the press doesn’t see it as a problem that it is? I mean, it depends who you’re asking. I think if you’re asking, like the people that are in mainstream media, they still don’t think that YouTube is a legit platform of news. They still don’t view it as a legit thing. So for them, I think the sentiment has always been like, well, that’s not real. So I’m New York Times, I’m CNN, people should listen to me because I have all of this backing. And the truth of the matter is that that’s just not the case anymore, that we have, if not millions, at least hundreds of thousands of people that are going daily on YouTube to get their news. They’re not going on traditional mainstream media, and I know that when 2016 and especially when 2018 happened, a lot of the focus was on Facebook. Rightfully so. Rightfully so. But just like anything, right? When you cover one hole, another one explodes, right? So we’ve been so focused on Facebook and to a certain degree on Twitter that we’ve completely abandoned YouTube, and YouTube really is the hot spot now. So why isn’t it being covered widely? I think because people don’t view it as legitimate yet. And frankly, Ali, like, I think people want to always respect their position and their legitimacy. So for me as a comms person to say, well, I actually think that YouTube is a legitimate platform that we need to pay attention to, then people are like, well, then why am I listening to you, CNN? Or, you know what I mean? So it’s not in their best interest also to admit that.
Ali Noorani [00:13:06] So is YouTube more accessible for people in terms of just production?
Valentina Pereda [00:13:10] Absolutely so YouTube is very low production. A lot of these YouTube personalities are- it looks like a zoom call almost. I mean, you just prop up a camera, put a microphone on and start talking, and then they have live chats at the bottom. So they’re doing like livecasts and then people are interacting. So it’s very, very, very low production. There are basically no barriers of access because anyone can upload a video on YouTube. So there is no vetting, there is no research. Nobody has to say you are the one that is legitimate to give me the news. Anyone can take that upon themselves. The time that we live in is a time where it doesn’t matter what the truth is, if the lie sounds more appealing. We can no longer operate with a mindset that if we told the truth then people are going to listen because it’s the truth. Now we say, well, we got to tell the truth, but how are we going to tell it? And not only how are we going to tell it, who is going to tell it?
Ali Noorani [00:14:03] So in the context of a pandemic and we’re still balancing prevention and mitigation and starting to kind of think about the vaccine, what does this all look like then right now? But then what does it need to look like moving forward
Valentina Pereda [00:14:15] To do a really quick read through of some of the misinformation we’ve seen around the vaccine specifically, of course, this is the thing about misinformation with immigrant communities and Spanish speaking communities: it’s not that different than what we see in English. It’s actually quite the same. The problem is that it’s not tracked and flagged in the same way that English is, right? So the microchip, the Bill Gates, Soros, all of that stuff we’re hearing on and in every different language, actually, we’re hearing it worldwide. I mean, the Soros Bill Gates conspiracy is a world, a global conspiracy that everybody talks about, not just here. The problem with misinformation in immigrant and Spanish speaking communities is that it’s not tracked in the same way that English is tracked by organizations. For example, I know there’s an oracle. I don’t know how to pronounce it. Pardon my my accent. I don’t know if it’s Avas or Avas, but they do misinformation tracting. And I was reading that they did a study last year. So when they were looking at misinformation posts that could be flagged as misinformation, they found that non English posts were only flagged at a rate of twenty percent versus English posts that were flagged at a rate of 70 percent. So if only 20 percent of the Spanish posts are being flagged as possible misinformation versus 70 percent, we have a very, very, very serious problem. And I think that on the tracking front, it has to come from organizations. I don’t know if it has to come from government, but really, the problem with Spanish language is that we don’t have an active lobby of groups, whether immigrant groups or whatever Latino groups, whatever you want to call it, groups that are sitting in front of Google, in front of Facebook, in front of YouTube and saying, how can you allow this to happen?
Ali Noorani [00:15:59] So does Google play a role in monitoring on the English language side of misinformation?
Valentina Pereda [00:16:04] I am not fully vursed on how Google is monitoring. I’m more versed on how YouTube and Twitter.
Ali Noorani [00:16:09] YouTube, I’m sorry.
[00:16:10] Yeah, so on YouTube. So there is- they do have like a very kind of superficial system of flagging. Like, of course you don’t if you if you YouTube in Spanish, if I say vacuna Microchip you’re not going to get the videos come up top, right? Of course, misinformation is like crime. It evolves very quickly. They know that now you see that people have to put asterisks in the middle of words so they don’t get tracked, right? With misinformation, tracking. Everybody was using these like Twitter technologies to track keywords and stuff like that. Like that doesn’t work anymore because now people are almost like using asterisk to throw that off. So now you have to evolve, right? I think with YouTube, they’re doing tracking in a very superficial level, like if there’s like microchip or, I don’t know, porn or whatever in the in the title of the video, then they’ll flag it and it won’t go up. But what people are not doing and my call to the Latino leaders and the orgs and the immigrant leaders in the orgs, what people are not doing is, first of all, we don’t know who these YouTube, we don’t know who informativo 24/7 is. We don’t know where this Sandra Valencia woman came from. We don’t know who’s funding them. We don’t know who scripting them. We don’t know any of this information.
Ali Noorani [00:17:22] Yeah because, I mean, there is still some barrier to entry, there’s some costs in terms of being able to set up your operation and have the time and the bandwidth to be generating content. The stuff doesn’t happen for free.
Valentina Pereda [00:17:32] Absolutely. Especially when you’re starting to get personalities that are getting four hundred thousand views per video. I mean, half a million views per video. When they go live, they’ll get like five thousand people on their lives. I mean, these are substantial numbers. And one of the things that I think is interesting for me and YouTube that we don’t see this phenomenon on Facebook and Twitter is the following. Facebook, Twitter, you post a tweet or you post a post and it’s done. It’s gone, right? Like whatever it gets shared, it goes viral. It’s gone. YouTube, what you have is you have individuals that are garnering large and loyal followings. Large and loyal followings. So this is not about one post going viral and being shared. We’re talking about people that actually have followers, that believe wholeheartedly what they say and followers that stay with them for many, many months, if not years. So it’s really preoccupying, in my opinion, that we have such little information about such powerful voices in the immigrant and Spanish speaking communities.
Ali Noorani [00:18:34] So then what are some of the strategies that you would kind of advocate for in terms of addressing these issues? So let’s say you run a large Latino civil rights organization. What are the things that you would be saying, okay these are the things we need to be putting into motion.
Valentina Pereda [00:18:47] It’s a long term investment. We’re not going to get a quick solution out of this. The first thing and I know this already started and there are people that are already doing this. But what we need to do, the tracking. I don’t think we’re tracking you to as well as we should. So the first research project that I would propose, for example, is let’s start a deep dive research project on YouTube. Let’s identify who are the top voices in Spanish language or in immigrant circles. I want to know who they are, where they come from, who’s funding them. And also, if we can get a team of people, you know, just to to download the transcripts of the past videos of the past, I don’t know, three months or whatever and see, what are the themes, what are they talking about? And we see what’s terrifying is when you start seeing what they’re talking about, you look at things like QAnon and then you’re like oh, my God. Like is Q’s press secretary, like sending talking points to these people, like what is happening? So on the tracking side, like that’s what I would like to see happening. And then on the action side, I just did an eight week sprint with New America, the Emerson Collective in the Colorado state government, because Colorado came to us and said, listen, we’re spending so much money on translating vaccine information on ads, on whatever, and people still don’t want to get the vaccine. So we went and did research. We interviewed immigrants and Spanish speaking residents of Colorado. We showed them these fancy communications products that the Colorado team had designed. And literally they looked at us and they said, I don’t care what the Colorado government has to say. So it goes back to my original point I made at the top of the interview that it’s it’s no longer about who has the right information. It’s about who is saying it. So we went back. That was an initial search. We went back and did an in-depth interview with different community organizations, different residents. And really what it boils down to is I want to see what people are saying. I want to see people from my community that look like me on the Covid vaccine front. They wanted to see specifically doctors and health officials that will give them the information. So it’s not about the governor or the mayor or whatever validator the Coms person at X office is going to go on CNN to talk about it. It’s about who is the community doctor. We also interviewed, for example, Muslim organizations. And for them, religious leaders are very credible. So who are the religious leaders in different communities, both Christian, Muslim, etc., that could talk about the Covid vaccine? So, again, this was only an eight week sprint. So then by the time we did all this research and we were able to put some tools in action, we only had two weeks left. So what we did was we identified, we worked with the community and we identified different doctors and different religious leaders, and we taught them how to become basically YouTube personalities. We gave the covid vaccine information in a way that was digestible, not like a 20 page fact sheet that for people. So we took all that information and we like repackaged it in video ideas. Basically, we gave them different like video episode ideas and this and naturally, exactly what you did. They grab their computers, had the information in front of us in front of them and started talking about the vaccine to their people. And it was great, you know what I mean? It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t mega viral. Like, it’s so funny to me when campaigns are like, we got to get Jennifer Lopez to talk about the vaccine.
Ali Noorani [00:22:21] Jennifer Lopez is not a real person.
Valentina Pereda [00:22:23] It’s like, who cares about what Jennifer Lopez is about the vaccine, you know what I mean? Who cares about what these celebrities have to say about the vaccine? You to go to the doctor, the community doctor, and get them to talk about the vaccine and teach them how, if they have the time. Well also, I said we’ve got to pay people right. Because it’s not like let’s go to doctors and tell them to become YouTube personalities. Like, I got to pay them to do it, right? So we had a little bit of money to pay them, and we had a Nigerian American doctor that did some series, we had a Spanish speaking doctor, we had an Imam from the downtown Denver Muslim Center, did a video and people loved it. They were like exactly these are people that I want to hear from. So to answer your question, I think there needs to be a long term real investment on YouTube so we can start creating the voices that are going to counter all of this misinformation. I’m not saying respond directly to it, but if they’re doing it already and in such a flashy way, we have to come up with our own flashy way of saying our side of the story. Yeah, and I think it takes- I certainly don’t have the whole solution, but it takes the right minds to come together and take YouTube seriously. I mean, we have two years, less than two years, until the midterms really. And I think that right now is the moment to begin.
Ali Noorani [00:23:33] Yeah, so we’ve done some research kind of in the conservative space around immigration. And number three, in terms of the most trusted source of news for folks, are friends and family networks. And it’s kind of the same whether it’s on the immigrant community or kind of a conservative white community. People are going to trust the folks that look and sound like them. And the stakes are so much higher when it comes to something like covid. So any sense of kind of like how Colorado is going to hold onto the strategy as we carry through this?
Valentina Pereda [00:24:00] That’s interesting. We’ll see because now what we’re running against is we have to teach government staffers, especially government communications staffers, how to do coms in a new and different way. You know what I mean? It’s like teaching them that- it’s not like- why do we still send press releases? I understand that the value in op-eds, it can be an op-ed every week, like nobody’s reading your op-ed every week. I think it’s teaching government staffers, we’re talking about the government front, how to engage the community and really teach them how they can teach people how to become their community spokespeople in a way. Because, I mean, this is a longer conversation, as a person that used to be a coms staffer, like the way that we pitched and the way that we identified, like you are a validator for many of these people, right? Like, they’re like, oh Ali, you need to go on CNN and like, do this hit and you know what I mean?
Ali Noorani [00:24:52] The only person is watching me is my mom.
Valentina Pereda [00:24:59] And you’re Ali Noorani. So they think that everybody already like wants to see you, which I’m sure a lot of people do-
Ali Noorani [00:25:06] sometimes my dad-
Valentina Pereda [00:25:08] But like a lot of people in D.C. do care what you have to say. But then outside of D.C., it’s a different story, right? We just need to stop communicating with the D.C. mindset. I think Coms staffers need to work closer with the teams of community engagement because every office has like a community engagement team. So I think communications and community engagement need to work closer so then they can identify the voices in their community that are going to be what I like to call community spokespeople for you. That’s one. And number two, let me say another thing that I’ve been telling government folks all the time, and I sound so like outsider now that I’m not like- I’ve been like four years removed. But it’s been really interesting to see during this crisis, for example, the whole problem with unemployment benefits or with the PPP loans. Those are two perfect examples. People were going to YouTube to get guidance, to get updates on what the heck was going on in Congress with regards to unemployment extension, what the heck was going on in Congress with how to apply to PPP loans, etc. So people were not going to mainstream media, much less to their government, to get information on things that affected their daily lives. So now we see that people are turning to YouTube for everything, even for cooking, gardening, unemployment benefits, covid-19 vaccine, everything. And it’s what people turn to first. So now, as a communications person, I want to ask you, what’s your YouTube strategy?
Ali Noorani [00:26:37] Yeah, and it’s I mean, organizations speaking on behalf of the Forum, like, we really kind of like, OK, we’ve got to have a YouTube channel? And then how do you think about the content in that space? But you’ve got to follow the eyeballs people.
Valentina Pereda [00:26:50] And the content, the content is simple. The content, you know, for you as in immigration right now the Biden’s bill was introduced in Congress today. I want to see you on YouTube explaining to people what that means. You know what I mean? They want to know what the time line is. What does this mean? When our application is going to be open? Like somebody like you has a great opportunity to use YouTube and guide people through this immigration process as it goes because they want answers. The problem is that a lot of communications people, when they think of com strategy, they just think of like more in a public relations way versus a communications way. Public relations is how do I make my principal look good? How do I make my organization look good? Communications is how do I get the information that I have to the people that need it, you know?
Ali Noorani [00:27:35] So in the context of covid-19, I guess I would argue that it’s more than communication. We are trying to persuade people and help people see that, OK, getting the vaccine is good for you and A, B, C and D ways.
Valentina Pereda [00:27:47] And even the question of persuasion is interesting because our research found that people didn’t want to be persuaded. They just wanted their questions answered. They just want their questions answered so that- To me communications has to actually shy away from persuasion and shy towards how do we answer the questions that people have?
Ali Noorani [00:28:05] Kind of explanation.
Valentina Pereda [00:28:07] Exactly, exactly, and in a way, and not through a 20 page explainer, you know what I mean? It has to be through YouTube. So if I was your comms person and today this immigration bill was introduced, I would tell you go on YouTube right now and explain to people that have no idea what DC is, what this means, what’s the process in Congress? What are the timelines that we’re looking for? What needs to happen? There’s people that are already on Twitter saying that because some Dems are not supporting this, the chances are slim of the full. So what I want you to know is that the other side is already saying, see. The other side’s already on YouTube saying, see, this is not going to happen. Biden’s not going to give you immigration reform like this is all a lie dah, dah, dah. That that’s what I mean. And because people don’t understand why there are delays, this delay of information allows the other side to just jump on it and create all of these fantasies. And because people are desperate, especially now, they’re desperate, they’re suffering, they want answers. I think the truth is that people right now want answers. Folks need to figure out ways in my advocacy through YouTube to get that information to the people in the best way possible.
Ali Noorani [00:29:13] Thank you very much for that. This is so helpful and it’s so good to hear that about this work in Colorado. I just think, like in Colorado, such it’s it’s a more diverse state than I think people realize. It was such a large Latino population.
Valentina Pereda [00:29:26] Yeah Colorado, I really commend them because, like I said, they are thinking about this. And so we created what we call the community video pilot of community voices that we started on the path of building their YouTube pages, building their their social media personalities. And like I said, as a coms staffer, your only job is to get the information to the people that need to get it in simple ways possible.
Ali Noorani [00:29:50] Fantastic. So I have just one more question for you. The name of the podcast is Only in America. So last question is just a request to finish the sentence: Only in America…
Valentina Pereda [00:29:59] Well, Only in America is the hope, to not say the illusion, the hope that tomorrow will be a better day or that tomorrow things can really change for you. Only in America does that hope sustain.
Ali Noorani [00:30:17] Fantastic thank you so, so much, really, really appreciate it.
Ali Noorani [00:30:19] Thank you so much, bye-bye.
Ali Noorani [00:30:33] Valentina Pereda is a communications expert, specializing in misinformation in the Latino community. You can learn more about Valentina and her work and links to vaccine PSAs in Arabic, Spanish and French at our website, ImmigrationForum.org/podcast. If you like what you hear, subscribe to Only in America wherever you are listening to this episode. Stay tuned for next week’s episode, where we’re going to continue our discussion of public health and vaccine access in immigrant communities. Only in America is produced and edited by Joanna Taylor and Becka Wall. Our artwork and graphics are designed by Karla Leyja. I’m Ali Noorani and I will talk to you next week.