as The Democratic National Convention begins Presidential campaign in Chicago on Monday Vice President Kamala Harris created a bilingual WhatsApp channel Targets Latino voters.
Campaign officials say the channel is a first for a presidential election.
It was officially unveiled on Monday morning, selfie-style video message from Julie Chavez RodriguezHarris campaign manager welcomes new subscribers to the channel.
Chavez Rodriguez said the channel is a place where users can get “behind-the-scenes” information about the campaign and what they’re doing to help Latino families.
According to a news release from the Harris campaign, the channel is run by members of the Latinos con Harris-Walz organizing program. They will be tasked with creating and posting “culturally literate content that reflects the Latino community already present on the platform.”
WhatsApp is an encrypted messaging app used globally to communicate for free across borders, making it ideal for US Latino families looking to stay in touch with relatives in Latin America, the States and elsewhere.
WhatsApp is more popular among Hispanics than any other US demographic. 54% of Hispanic adults report using the app. Pew Research Center survey was published in January.
At the same time, Latinos have more trust in messaging platforms like WhatsApp exposed them disproportionately to misinformation in both English and Spanish, as there are few effective means of preventing the large volume of misinformation shared bilingually between encrypted private group chats. 2021 Nielsen report.
Harris campaign officials see the new WhatsApp channel as “another tool” to combat election disinformation aimed at Latino voters, particularly those in battleground states.
Latino voters stand to reshape the presidential race in ways that are hard to predict since then many of them are young people and newly registered votersaccording to memory recently Equis Research survey.
This demographic gets its news mainly in English and from digital sourcesaccording to Pew Research Center study It was published in March, pointing to significant nuances in how this bicultural and often bilingual set of Americans stay informed.
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