Mexican voters are about to elect their first female president, a cause for celebration for many that has also sparked a wave of false and misogynistic online claims, blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
The two leading candidates, both women, have had to respond to demeaning attacks on their appearance, their credentials and their ability to lead the nation.
The candidate considered the favorite Sunday’s matchformer mayor of Mexico City Claudia Sheinbaum, has also faced insults about her Jewish background and repeatedly debunked claims that she was born in Hungary. In an apparent attempt to undermine her candidacy, a social media account posing as a legitimate news outlet posted fake, AI-generated audio of Sheinbaum admitting her campaign failed in a key Mexican state.
The wave of election misinformation facing voters in Mexico is the latest example of how the internet, social media and AI are fueling the spread of false, misleading or hateful content in democracies around the world, distorting public debate and potentially distorting the election results are affected.
“There is a general atmosphere of disinformation here in Mexico, but it is somewhat different than the situation happens in Indiaor the US,” says Manuel Alejandro Guerrero, professor and communications researcher at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
In the case of Mexico, this disinformation is the result of growing distrust of the news media. violence committed by drug cartelsand a rapid increase in social media use, coupled with a slowdown in digital literacy. Guerrero now added another factor known to Americans: political leaders WHO like to spread disinformation himself.
Sheinbaum is a member of the Morena party, led by the current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She faces opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez and Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the small Citizen Movement party.
Compared to the election misinformation spread about male candidates, the attacks against Gálvez and Sheinbaum are often deeply personal in nature and focus on their gender, said Maria Calderon, a lawyer and researcher from Mexico who works with the Mexico Institute, a think tank based in Washington, DC, that studies online politics.
“I was surprised by how cruel the comments could be,” said Calderon, whose analysis shows that attacks on female candidates like Sheinbaum and Gálvez typically focus on their appearance or their credentials, while misinformation about male candidates is more often about policy proposals.
“A lot of direct attacks on their weight, their height, how they dress, the way they act, the way they talk,” Calderon said.
She suggested that some of the sexism can be traced back to Mexico’s “machismo” culture and strong Catholic roots. It was not until 1953 that women were given the right to vote in Mexico.
Lopez Obrador has spread some false claims against Gálvez, like he did last year when he falsely said she supported plans to end several popular social programs if elected. Despite her efforts to set the record straight, the story continues to haunt her campaign, showing how effective political disinformation can be even when debunked.
Scammers have also dabbled in the disinformation trade in Mexico, using AI deepfake videos from Sheinbaum in an effort to spread investment fraud, for example.
“You’ll see it’s my vote, but it’s fraud,” Sheinbaum said after a deepfake of her, allegedly an investment scam, went viral.
As in other countries, the tech companies that operate most major social media platforms say they have rolled out a range of programs and policies designed to blunt the effect of disinformation in the run-up to the election.
Meta and other US-based technology platforms have been criticized for focusing most of their efforts on misinformation in English, while pursuing a “ cookie cutter ‘approach to the rest of the world.
“We are focused on providing reliable election information while combating disinformation in different languages,” said a statement from Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, about its election plans.
The specter of violence has haunted the elections since the beginning of the first campaigns. Dozens of candidates for smaller offices have been murdered or kidnapped by criminal gangs. Drug cartels do spread terror in the run-up to the electionsspraying campaign rallies with gunfire, burning ballots and preventing polling stations from being set up.
“This has been the most violent elections that Mexico has had since we started registering elections,” Calderon said.
