Violence Against Asian Americans Prompts Organizers to Take on Disinformation

Last week, Congressional representatives pressed tech CEOs including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai on extremism and disinformation. Multiple lawmakers referred to the deadly shooting in Atlanta that targeted Asian spa workers earlier this month, and the rise in hate speech and crimes targeting Asian Americans.

“The issues we are discussing here are not abstract- they have real world consequences and implications that are too often measured in human lives,” said Representative Doris Matsui, D-CA. “I’m worried- as are many watching this hearing- that the companies before us today are not doing enough to prevent the spread of hate, especially when it is targeted against minority communities.”

I spoke with Vivian Chang, a civic engagement manager for the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO (APALA) about steps her organization is taking to confront disinformation in the communities it works with, including working with the Disinfo Defense League, a coalition that trains civic groups to tackle the growing problem of misinformation and disinformation.

Justin Hendrix:

Hello Vivian! Tell me about what you do.

Vivian Chang:

My name is Vivian Chang. I work for APALA, which is the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. We are a labor constituency group under the AFL-CIO, so we sit at the intersection of labor unions, worker centers, and Asian American and Pacific Islander workers. My role is a Civic Engagement Manager, so that's all of our elections, census, and political activity.

Justin Hendrix:

Bring me up to speed on what the last year has been like. Clearly you had a president who started to use racist rhetoric early on in the pandemic, and now we're beginning to see- perhaps as people begin to encounter one another more- we're beginning to see that spill over into physical violence. What's it been like following these issues for the last year?

Vivian Chang:

The way we've described it sometimes is a pandemic within a pandemic. So AAPI communities were facing the same health problems, and then we're also facing anti-Asian racism, loss of business. Some of people's first reactions to hearing about COVID in other countries was to stop eating at Chinese restaurants. And that I think shows just how tied all of that is together. I mean, and we're seeing it now in the response actually to the Atlanta shootings, people are saying, "Okay, I want to support Asian American communities. Let's order Chinese take out."

So it's tough because I think a lot of these issues are not new at all. I think fortunately some narratives that are usually overlooked are being lifted up in the wake of the shootings, in terms of recognizing that anti-Asian racism is as old as Asian Americans being in this country. There's the 1875 Page Act, which prohibited Chinese American women from coming here because it deemed them all as prostitutes. But really it was also about just lowering the number of immigrants who would be here. If you don't have folks to marry, you don't have folks to make a family with, you're going to go back to China, everything like that. We still see that today in how the government talks about, especially Republicans, talk about immigration. It's all about cutting people off from their families and making sure they can't be here, making sure the incentives are not here to stay.

So, yeah, it's just been really heavy. I mean, how it's been dealing with it is I think every community goes through this when their community members are victimized. But it's the times when you want to just grieve, you just want to mourn together, and you have to be answering media requests and you have to be responding to just a ton of different things all at once.

Photos provided by Vivian Chang.

Justin Hendrix:

So do you feel that the media has handled this issue well?

Vivian Chang:

In a lot of ways it has not been handled well. I think that it's a massive uphill battle, and there are a lot of different angles. So when we talk about media, I think a lot of folks think traditional media, news media- and that is an institution that's overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male. And it costs so much money to be able to get an unpaid internship, to stick around in the industry, have precarious working conditions. So the types of people who are writing these stories are often more well-off, they're disconnected from these issues.

So that's the first barrier. And the next is newsrooms don't have as many of those public editor positions. They aren't hiring for diversity. And so when we look at who can write about a story with a lens of cultural competency, it's very scant, that population.

And then on top of that, the AAPI community literally spans dozens of countries, dozens of languages. So sometimes there's one Asian American reporter on staff, but they're trying to talk about dozens of communities. They're trying to talk about Chinese-Americans who've been here for multiple generations, South Asians, etc. And the recognition of the really intense diversity of the AAPI community isn't there.

We saw that a lot in the wake of Atlanta. The first instinct from a lot of news organizations was to just repeat what the police said, which is problematic on its own. And then to really deny that it was fueled by race and to say, "Oh, well, he said it was a bad day. He said all these things." And that comes from a lack of recognition of what racism looks like in this country in a lot of different ways.

Justin Hendrix:

So in the last few days we've heard testimony on Capitol Hill from Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai from Alphabet about extremism and disinformation and other related issues. Do you feel like you're hearing that the social media networks understand these issues or are handling them? What are your communities telling you about that?

Vivian Chang:

Either they don't understand it or they're willfully ignoring the problem, that's what we're seeing. Because there is so, so much disinformation, so many bad faith arguments, and literal targeting of people to persuade them of things that aren't true.

So in terms of our communities right now, again, really there's a lot of instances, there are a lot of really recent examples post Atlanta, but different community organizations across the country, Asian American community organizations, they're getting targeted by trolls. People who are just posting a lot of either really just pro fascist things or they're just trying to retraumatize and re-trigger the people who are trying to help communities. Or just your plain old harassment on the regular, from people who don't want to see Asian American communities coming together.

And the tech platforms are so reticent to address that. Usually what we hear is, "Oh, report it, report it for harassment." Okay. So you report someone over and over, it rarely gets removed. And then when you do, it's hundreds of accounts, when it's clear that there's some coordination behind it. These platforms are offering more tools to go beyond that. So that's what we're seeing.

And then in terms of disinformation or false narratives that is also usually propagated. I think there was a study that showed the source for half of all disinformation was just a handful of pages. So it's clearly something that these platforms have the power to crack down on and to really restrict, which would help people who are being traumatized and being harassed out of this work that they're doing to really try to help communities heal.

Justin Hendrix:

So how do you work with your chapters on this? You've got local chapters all across the country. Are there examples of efforts that they've taken at a local level to address these things?

Vivian Chang:

Yeah, definitely. Our national headquarters is in DC, and we work with a lot of national community groups, coalitions. We basically share that information out. What are we hearing inside the beltway, what policy looks like. Just in general, what do other communities see that our APALA members might not see?

For instance, our Massachusetts chapter- there are a lot of older immigrants, a lot of folks who are still predominantly Chinese speaking rather than English speaking. So they get their news and information from WeChat or from outlets that don't write in English. And there's literal right-wing funded disinformation targeting those platforms.

And it spans the gamut, it's not all really elections related. There was a lot of false information around Black Lives Matter, and even before that, around the Hong Kong protests. So our chapter there has continuously done member education around these issues that we care about, because we know that a lot of these folks share common interests with seeking housing for all, rent control, better wages for workers.

And so coming with that is racial justice and things like that. And it's not that folks are opposed to it, but they hear all these false stories, for example, around the Hong Kong protests. A lot of members had heard stories about protesters biting the fingers off of cops in Hong Kong, which is completely false, but it was just super, super predominant on the platform. And so as a chapter, they had to have conversations about, "This is what really happened. This is what the fake news looks like. This is how you can tell it's fake," things like that.

And what's great is, that's a chapter that really has those continuous relationships with members because they're advocating on a wide variety of fronts. So it isn't just, drop in, "Hey, that's fake. Okay, bye. See you later."

Justin Hendrix:

So one of the things that I'm always struck by now is the extent to which it has become the job of so many local community organizers and groups to confront rumors and disinformation, and even coordinated, targeted harassment online. Is it your view that this has become a significant part of what community organizers are doing, as opposed to what it was in the past? It just strikes me that it's, I don't know, almost an externality of the existence of these platforms, that so much effort now is going into just dealing with the constant flow of raw nonsense and sewage that's coming across them.

Vivian Chang:

Yeah. No, you're exactly right. At APALA, we joined the Disinformation Defense League earlier this year because the problem with disinformation isn't going away and it's become so large. So that even though we're trying everyday to fight for workers' rights, we're trying to build up leadership in the movement and all these other good things, we also have to be looking at what Facebook isn't doing to prevent people from being targeted by right-wing outlets and things like that.

Or we do a lot of work around elections and we're always faced, more recently now, with voters who are like, "Oh, I heard this person's a communist," or, "I heard X, Y, Z." So instead of being able to have a conversation that starts with, "What issues do you care about?" Or, "How does your job impact your life?"- those are those bread and butter issues you want to talk about- instead we have to address the latest rumor that people are hearing.

The burden is falling on the community groups, who are the ones who are actually communicating with folks and wanting to see things improve. I think it's such a one-way valve that all this fake news, everything comes down to us. And then we're the ones who have to bear the burden to try to address it.

Justin Hendrix:

So as a communicator, in your work with the Disinfo Defense League, you're looking for rubrics, frameworks, tips, ideas about how to do these things. Are there other sources of information that you're looking to for that kind of thing right now? Have you had to make yourself a disinformation expert? Are there others in your organization working on this?

Vivian Chang:

Yeah, great question. I mean like, what we really appreciate is we're part of a national coalition called NCAPA, which is the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans. And they basically are an umbrella organization for a lot of national groups like ours. So they help with messaging, they're also monitoring disinformation. So that's a big source for us.

I think the tough part is while there are many groups or organizations to plug into around census and elections, there are a lot of issues that don’t fall into those categories that people are getting targeted around. And so there's just a big gap that we're still seeing. For example, the COVID vaccine- there are a lot of rumors around that. There's a lot of information that isn't true, but there's not as much recognition of the need to address that, nor is there recognition of the huge barriers to access for Asian-Americans who don't speak English, or have access to the internet. So we're dealing with just that first barrier of helping people schedule appointments and find out their eligibility. And then there's a whole other separate barrier of people being afraid of it, or being not sure how it works or what to do after you get the vaccine.

So yeah, I think we always piece it together from the information that is out there and from coalitions like Disinformation Defense League, but it's tough. There's there's just not a big coordinated thing, there is not a lot of investment in these issues.

Justin Hendrix:

Does your organization have a point of view on reform, either to the tech firms or any media reforms that it's seeking?

Vivian Chang:

Great question. I don't think we have an official one, but personally I'm all for breaking them up.

Justin Hendrix:

You think that it's an issue of scale?

Vivian Chang:

Yeah, I think it's scale. If we had a real free market- it's competition. That's what incentivizes companies to do better, to actually listen to their customers. But when there's no alternative, of course a company is not going to act. It's like ethical and moral pressures or guidelines don't work for a lot of massive corporations. And so they're going to follow their bottom line. Well, the bottom line doesn't move if there's no other alternative to Facebook out there.

Justin Hendrix:

What has this meant for you personally?

Vivian Chang:

It's interesting being in a community where suddenly there's a lot of attention- when Atlanta happened, it really just reminded me of the Mother Emanuel AME shooting, Tree of Life, the Walmart shooting, El Paso. And I was like, "Okay, I have people who are checking in now," and I know how that feels to be on the receiving end of it.

But I will say, APALA has gotten a lot more attention than we have in the past. And that's really great because there's a lot of good stuff that we want people to know about. And AAPI workers are often last on the list. When people think of Asian-Americans, if they think of them, it sometimes starts with the food and then maybe random cultural things they know about. And then maybe representation in media on down the line. But thinking of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as workers, people in the movement, people who have the same kinds of needs around access to a union, good wages, all of that, that is not on anybody's mind usually. So I think that's just been really fortunate.

Justin Hendrix:

I wish you the best with all of what you're doing.