The digital age has transformed how we consume news, but it has also created a fertile ground for the spread of false narratives. This reality is particularly acute within the Asian American community, a diverse yet often-overlooked demographic navigating a complex information landscape. A recent study, “Converging Exposures, Divergent Experiences,” released by Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ), brings this challenge into sharp focus, revealing startling statistics about the prevalence of sharing fabricated stories. The data points to a significant behavioral divide across generations, hinting at a nuanced relationship with media that is shaped by age, cultural background, and the very sources people choose to trust. The findings suggest that while the vast majority consume news from an array of sources, the digital ecosystem is profoundly failing to serve this community, leaving many vulnerable to misinformation that now, as experts suggest, is increasingly being generated and amplified by artificial intelligence.
The numbers themselves tell a compelling story about the scope of the issue. The report indicates that more than a third of all Asian American respondents have shared a political story that was later found to be fabricated. But the most eye-catching revelation is the generational contrast: 29% of Asian Americans over the age of 45 admitted they have shared a news story knowing it was false at the time. This group originally landed in the survey designed by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, with an extensive demographic spread: millennials were the majority at 55%, Gen Z at 43%, and only about 2% of final respondents were 45 and older. However, the mechanism of the study, which recruited participants through online gaming platforms, skews the data heavily toward younger males—a consideration for methodology that shapes the findings and points out a gap rather than a reflection of the population as a whole.
The ethnicity of the survey details how misinformation spreads across the community. A hierarchy emerges where multiple sub-groups are impacted by the crisis. The statistics show 32% of Hmong respondents were the most likely to knowingly share made-up stories, with Pacific Islanders following at 29% and Native Hawaiians plus Filipinos at 22%. South Asian and East Asian responses were lower, with Indians at 19% and Vietnamese and Korean respondents at 18% each. Chinese respondents were the least likely to share known misinformation, with only 14% admitting to it. The variance becomes this new vivid way that the underlying cultural and linguistic forces are at play, affecting how people search, decipher, and share information—and which falsehoods they are susceptible to in the first place.
The report’s authors connect these digital behaviors directly to the media ecosystem and the creation of information vacuums. Jenny Liu, Senior Manager of Misinformation Policy at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, is clear: “Misinformation seems to be coming from all sources, where artificial intelligence is further kind of polluting how people access information.” She cautions that the burden of vetting sources has fallen squarely on community members themselves, forcing them to hunt for trusted information in a polluted ecosystem. The danger is that people often seek a certain peace or a semblance of truth and find it in the falsehoods that are being generated specifically for them, as nefarious actors step into these information voids with content that supports their own political agendas. This underscores a volatile situation that leaves a vacuum that older and newer immigrants alike find difficult to fill with verifiable facts—especially when the broader media does not always speak their language.
Turning attention to age, the study reveals a complex generation gap—the young are the most likely to be hypervigilant, while the old can be surprisingly complacent. Asked why older Asian Americans might share false information, Liu speculates they might not be looking for factfulness so much as a recap. According to many Asian home countries, news comes exclusively from government sources and is rarely challenged, so when they immigrate, they carry healthy skepticism but not a complete distrust of the sources in front of them. In contrast, Gen Z consciously miscalibrates: Their primary source of news is social media with an age that has little to no engagement with in-language or ethnic media. The alternative is that they show a higher level of concern about exposure for their grandparents or parents who are living in the US bubble, having to depend on circumstances so different than their older relatives might be.
To reach the younger demographics, the traditional playbook is changing. Liu, who co-authored the study, notes that Asian American activists and media creators are no longer relying on mainstream or traditional news opportunities. Instead, they have taken matters into their own hands, creating vibrant, digital-first ecosystems that are shaping the conversation. She explains, “The ecosystem of TikTok accounts have a significant role, and podcast—but 61% of Gen X still reads and watches Asian news on a regular basis,” while their informational main source is still US news. The report highlights a common frustration among these readers: they consume Asian news to find stories that matter to them desperately, ones that don’t rely on stereotypes. Often, when mainstream publications cover a certain community, the biggest stumbling block immediately appears as the names spelled wrong—or a perspective of an outsider. That’s the essence of why community media has this power—it’s created by and for the community, centering a lens that’s usually missing from larger coverage.
The path forward is less about clamping down on misinformation and more about funding and strengthening the spaces that serve as gatekeepers. They are, in short, urging a journalism strategy that doesn’t just translate into another language but instead contextualizes the news within the lived experience of the community. With in-language and credible media sources, the narrative can be rewired to prioritize safety and care—analogies—in the face of AI and algorithmic manipulation. Building the infrastructure is a public good, an antidote to the misinformation that thrives in the void, a way to protect the community’s future, and a way to elevate the discourse that is so central to democratic life. After all, the health of any community is fundamentally tied to the health of their information streams, and the decisions about the future of this community depend on this health entirely.