Latinos in south San Diego wary of news media, survey finds
By Tammy Murga
In the southwestern region of San Diego County, Latinos, particularly immigrants, stay informed mainly through traditional news media, but feel left out of hyperlocal and impactful coverage, according to a survey.
They want information that is bilingual, community-centric, resource-based and accessible to those who are not technologically savvy or do not have access to the internet.
“The Latino population is very vulnerable,” said Breny Acetuino, program manager for Partnerships 4 Success. “Some of us don’t speak English or don’t fully understand it, and sometimes some of us don’t even read Spanish. How can we get them services in a way that’s accessible to them?”
Partnerships 4 Success is a coalition facilitated by the Institute for Public Strategies, a San Diego public health nonprofit. The organization wants to deliver South County communities the information they are seeking via a “bilingual reporting lab,” while also curtailing misinformation in Latino and Spanish-speaking communities.
Survey responses are helping shape this effort.
What Latinos in South County want
Last month, the coalition released the results of a survey it conducted last year with more than 300 people from the south region and Tijuana.
To help develop the lab, the coalition first identified the population.
South County, composed of jurisdictions such as Chula Vista, National City, Imperial Beach and San Diego’s San Ysidro, is about 61% Latino. Nearly 40% speak a language other than English at home, according to 2020 demographics data from the county.
This region also includes many low-income and migrant families, has the second-highest concentration of people without health insurance and third-highest receiving food stamps, county data show.
Partnerships 4 Success then sought to learn what issues these communities are most concerned about and where they find information about these topics. The organization surveyed people in supermarkets and community fairs across the southern jurisdictions.
Survey results showed that people prioritize issues about health, housing, education and employment and care less about local politics.
About 28% of respondents said it’s challenging to find information about topics most important to them. They said there is a lack of translated or Spanish resources, insufficient equitable coverage of South County, a need for internet literacy or reducing technological divides and a need for more resource-based news.
In their own words: “There is no information in Spanish.”
“These days, most of the information is offered on the Internet. I don’t have Internet access, much less a smartphone.”
“The media usually covers negative stories of South Bay — shootings, crime, etc. — but do not discuss its underlying causes or promote information that will help improve the community.”
Television, particularly Spanish broadcasts, prevails as the popular method to generally stay informed. But responses showed that people don’t really trust the news media to reflect the needs of their communities.
“The issues we discuss at the national level sometimes are not as important to lowincome and transborder communities,” said Lourdes Cueva Chacón, professor at San Diego State University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies. “They pay more attention to what’s happening in their communities, things that affect them day by day. So, they pay attention to families and friends and community organizations or promotoras.”
Among the popular vehicles Latinos use to stay connected with their friends and families are social media and messaging software, such as WhatsApp. That’s often where people share information, be it factual or not.
‘A foundation of doubt and mistrust’
The pandemic showed a troubling connection among Latinos, social media and misinformation.
Nationwide, Latinos were nearly 60% more likely to use social media than anything else to obtain information about COVID-19, according to a 2020 Nielsen study. They were also among the groups most hesitant to get inoculated.
First Draft researchers, who work to tackle online mis- and disinformation, said in a 2021 report that many reasons contributed to an initial vaccination gap among Latinos. Medical exploitation and discrimination, language barriers and concerns about immigration status, child care and work schedules played big roles.
“All of these factors create a foundation of doubt and mistrust that allows misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines to flourish on social media,” read the report, which looked at Facebook groups and Spanish-speaking discourse on platforms such as Telegram.
Whether it was their personal health or having to work essential jobs that made them vulnerable to exposure, South County Latinos were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. And local concerns about the vaccine were no different from those cited in national studies.
Acetuino said South County communities worried that getting shots would cost them money, loss of work hours or require information about one’s immigration status.
Eventually, Latino vaccination rates soared higher
than most other ethnic groups. County data showed the south region was 94% inoculated and the secondhighest area was north-central San Diego with 74.5%.
Promotoras, pop-up clinics and nonprofits that used culturally relevant messaging on traditional news outlets and social media, often in Spanish and with trusted community leaders, helped turn around vaccination rates for Latinos.
Reaching out to other communities
With the feedback Partnerships 4 Success has gathered, how will it develop its bilingual reporting lab?
The group has working examples of how the project could look.
Oakland’s El Tímpano is one it is closely following. The nonprofit news organization sends text messages to its subscribers, mainly Bay Area Latinos and Maya immigrants, explaining new policies or proposals on housing, immigration and health. Their communications often end with a question. Last year, the organization answered more than 1,500 questions, most of which were about the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Our special sauce is trust,” said Madeleine Bair, founder of El Tímpano. “A large part of what we’ve been doing ever since [the pandemic] is provide people with ongoing public health information and just really be there for when people have questions.”
El Tímpano is one of several organizations using similar strategies designed to provide communities with more equitable access to resources and information that is specific to their needs. Others have launched with the goal of tackling “fake news,” such as Factchequeado, which targets Spanish-language misinformation in the U.S., and fact-checker Maldita.es.
The South County bilingual reporting lab is to debut in March, Acetuino said. Partnerships 4 Success is partnering with San Diego State’s journalism department with plans of having students produce content the lab will offer, Chacón said.
As the initiative takes form, Acetuino said, she envisions the lab helping more than just Spanish speakers.
“I would love to see this happening in Tagalog, and I’d like to see it happen in any other language where people have a need or that there’s a disparity when it comes to accessing information that can really save their lives,” she said.