Vietnamese diaspora in Seattle are tackling misinformation

In 2020, the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington took a look at misinformation being spread online about voting in person and by mail. They found a surprising number of social media posts in Vietnamese.

After collecting information across sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Post Doctoral fellow Rachel Moran and Sarah Nguyễn, a Ph.D. student, began having conversations about how Vietnamese people navigate their information environments.

For Nguyễn, the conversations ahead of the research were already personal.

Growing up Nguyễn said her family hardly discussed politics. A lot of that changed in 2020 against the backdrop of COVID-19 and the George Floyd protests. At that time, Nguyễn found out that her mother got a lot of news via Vietnamese YouTube videos, programs that were in Vietnamese and led by other Vietnamese people.

The information was egregious, she said.