Migration Misinformation in Spanish-language Tweets during a Pandemic

Authored by Katharine M. Donato, Lisa Singh, Ali Arab, Elizabeth Jacobs and Douglas Post, this Migration Research Series paper builds on prior studies of migration misinformation by analysing Twitter conversations in Spanish, the fourth most widespread language in the world. The paper assesses the prevalence of different types of misinformation about migrants and migration in Spanish-language tweets and examines whether and how migration misinformation varies by location and shifts in the spread of this misinformation. Findings reveal that migration misinformation is overwhelmingly about safety threats and, to a lesser extent, about economic and health threats. Migration misinformation is also global: tweets are spatially distributed in specific ways and linked more to traditional news outlets than other sources. Although it resonates more on some days than others, migration misinformation also appears to be fairly consistent across the period of study.