With the ongoing federal electoral campaign, experts warn that migrant communities could see more misleading and false information before issuing their vote.
Migrants, especially those who speak English as a second language, are disproportionate during crises, elections and referendum when misinformation and misinformation are amplified, research has been found abroad.
Before this year’s federal elections, Australian experts set out to understand how and why it extends between these communities.
It occurs when researchers also warn that the country is “underlined” to address the deceptive information that circulates in communities that do not speak English.
Sukhmani Khorana, a professor associated with media at the University of NSW, and Fan Yang, a researcher at the University of Melbourne, have been investigating political literacy and multimedia between the Chinese and southern communities in southern Asia in Australia since 2023.
This coincided with the indigenous voice referendum of the Parliament last year, when
“It was after the referendum, or the week before the result was announced, that the Australian public, the media, the political elite, the AEC (the Australian Electoral Commission) realized the scope of the evil and misinformation that existed, and was being attacked in the migrant communities in particular,” Khorana told SBS News.
“I think people were a bit taken by surprise, and what is happening now is an answer to that.”
Is it an erroneous misinformation?
The AEC defines erroneous information as false information that extends due to ignorance, or by mistake or error, without the intention of deceiving.
Disinformation, on the other hand, is knowing information that is designed to deliberately deceive and influence public opinion or darken the truth.
Khorana said that her and Yang’s investigation found badly and misinformation, which is directed to migrant communities takes place on platforms where there is limited supervision and uses different languages from English.
She cites research from the United States related to last year’s presidential elections, which showed that migrants were disproportionately led by erroneous information.
“If that will take place in Australia now in this current election campaign … we will discover it.”
Where the potentially misleading content is spread
Yang also accompanies a research project called Recapture, which has been collecting and monitoring public publications on social media platforms in the Chinese language since 2019.
This began with Wechat, an established application, and last year extended to Xiaohongshu, or Rednote in English.
A 2023 report from the Lowy Institute showed that more than half of Chinese Australians from 18 to 44 years used Wechat daily, compared to 34 percent of those of 45 years or more.
“What we have observed is that there are different types of misinformation stories on both platforms, and are traded commercially or politically driven, or they could have a mixture of both,” said Yang.
She said that immigration policies, including those related to foreign investment, are often a “specific approach.”
While these narratives have been ongoing, Yang said the elections have seen them “promoted and amplified.”
“There are many things on social media platforms, and we have a series of research attendees who work with us to monitor political discussions,” said Yang.
This includes political candidates in electorates with a significant population of Chinese Australians “mobilizing” their campaigns on platforms, including Wechat and Rednote.
Yang said that some media in Chinese language seem to translate news in English or official news sources in Chinese and “editorialize the content to obtain clicks.”
The team has also compiled material from influential people or content producers.
Perhaps the most “problematic and misleading” source is the material that Yang affirms seems to be produced by Australian or abroad immigration and education agencies.
“Immigration and education agencies tend to exploit the interest of such issues [immigration and foreign investment]and dramatize and raise the attention of certain policies, and then they appropriate language again and manipulate the probability of the event to get the attention of people, “he said.
“When they successfully call people’s attention for their deceptive publication … they tend to monetize their attention and redirect user attention to a private chat.”
Confidence in the media and role of the community
Migrant communities are also susceptible to deceptive content because they are not sure who to trust.
“There are knowledge gaps about the political economy of Australia, of the inherited media of Australia, in which the sources of information are reliable and the lack of understanding and the lack of trust, who to trust,” Khorana said.
“Therefore, there is a greater dependence on the sources that are happening through these platforms, many of which are not verified sources.”
Khorana and Yang’s research found that younger women were generally more political and media experts, working to discredit misleading information for their friends and family. Most of them said this was “emotionally laborious” but an important job.
“While these community interventions are important, we should not be assuming the burden of individual community members who do not receive resources in any way to do that job,” Khorana said.
Lack of supervision
Khorana said that misinformation and misinformation can spread on platforms where there is no government supervision or regulatory bodies “that can understand what is said and how it is shared.”
“The AEC works in close collaboration with some social media companies … but the AEC cannot be on platforms such as Rednote,” he said.
However, Khorana said that the work is being carried out to anticipate knowledge gaps before the deceptive information is spread, such as translating electoral information in several languages and building relationships with community groups and media diasporic.
AEC spokesman Evan Ekin-Smyth said that civic education workshops within multicultural communities had been a focus.
The last federal election, in 2019, the AEC collaborated with some important Wechat channels to publish Chinese translations of its official materials. In February, he met with the platform to develop a reference route on the erroneous information of the elections.
But Ekin-Smyth said the landscape that changes rapidly is a challenge of navigating.
“This is not only channels in languages, this is all channels. The proliferation of social media channels has been significant, particularly in recent years,” he said.
“There is a limit to the number of places we can go and the amount of money we can spend on advertising and the type of presence we can keep in different channels.”
In a separate statement, the AEC said it was able to investigate content on platforms such as Wechat or Rednote if you are sent.
An AEC spokesman said: “The AEC has already received a series of references from Australian users of Rednote about the electoral content for the next federal elections.”
“The AEC would appreciate the commitment to the representatives of Rednote as part of our efforts to ensure that political candidates and other relevant entities are executing their campaigns in accordance with Australian laws.”
But the spokesman pointed out that the electoral law does not regulate the truth in electoral communications.
“The AEC only has very limited powers in relation to the regulation of deceptive electoral communications, where an voter is deceived in relation to the issuance of a vote.”
‘We are little prepared’
Yang said that misinformation has long been a problem for social networks in Chinese, and most of this material is identified by platform algorithms or user reports.
She said that deceptive content can also circulate on other platforms.
She argued that the problem is reduced to how Australia defines more widely misinformation and misinformation.
“The misinformation and erroneous information online, distributed around the communities that do not speak English, or circulated within the closed private channels, have been overlooked for a long time by the Australian regulatory agencies and also the national media,” he said.
The federal government Due to the opposition in the Senate.
The discarded legislation would have given the power of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to monitor digital platforms and demand that you keep records on erroneous information and misinformation in your networks.
“We are little prepared to address or intervene the misinformation and erroneous information that circulates within the English -speaking Chinese communities or non -English -speaking communities,” said Yang.
How to detect errors and misinformation
Khorana encouraged all voters, particularly those who are not familiar with Australian media, to verify the source and their background.
She said that it is also important to trust informed opinion or experience, not only what is appearing in her feed of social networks.
“Think about that person’s experience, even if they are only making a Facebook reel or making an Instagram post.”
The AEC urges all voters to stop and think about the information they see online.
“I would recommend that people review multiple sources of information, because that is the best thing can do to protect themselves,” Khorana said.
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