This story was first published by IJNet.
Fueled by powerful winds and rare dry conditions, a series of wildfires erupted on January 7 and swept through the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The fires claimed at least 29 lives and at one point, close to 200,000 people were under evacuation orders.
Alongside the devastation, false information about the fires ran rampant — including among Chinese-speaking communities in the U.S.
“Misinformation spread like wildfire,” said Jinxia Niu, program manager at Piyaoba, a Chinese-language fact-checking platform. “People were confused. It was almost as if both the fire and misinformation were too big to contain.”
Mixed signals
Social media served as a vector for false information. “Chinese social media is unique; the spread of misinformation travels fast on platforms like WeChat and RedNote,” said Niu. With over 1.3 billion active users and 350 million users, respectively, it is difficult for fact-checkers to keep pace and debunk all distorted content on the platforms.
This rapid spread of misinformation on Chinese social media is particularly concerning for new Chinese immigrants in the U.S., who may find themselves navigating unfamiliar systems, such as the insurance landscape, the complexity of which is compounded by language barriers and jargon. The opaque pricing, lack of standardization, and high administrative burden make filing claims daunting.
One business news account published an article on WeChat that falsely linked 180,000 evacuees to uninsured households and sensationalized the situation by claiming that insurance companies were refusing to pay due to high demand. The article has received more than 100,000 views.
The article also exaggerated that over 530,000 households in LA County lack property insurance — when the actual estimate was just over 154,000 as of 2023 — according to an analysis by LendingTree’s home insurance experts. Inflated statistics are a common tactic in misinformation, as they generate shock and urgency, making readers more likely to share without fact-checking.
The piece also omitted key context: the largest insurance provider in California, State Farm, withdrew 1,600 policies in the Palisades area last July — months before the LA fire, not during it. Additionally, the article simplified how the fires affected people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and ignored crucial factors like government disaster relief and financial aid programs.
Other articles and social media posts intensified claims about a lack of leadership during the crisis. Specifically, LA Mayor Karen Bass was on a diplomatic trip to Ghana as fires raged across the county. Upon her return, she appeared caught off guard when questioned about alleged million-dollar budget cuts to the LA Fire Department (LAFD). This fueled misinformation that LAFD funds had been redirected to DEI efforts such as hiring the first openly gay and female fire chief, Kristin Crowley, and to programs supporting illegal immigrants narratives that spread quickly across Chinese-language social media and incited hostility toward LGBTQ and immigrant communities.
In reality, although Mayor Bass proposed a 2.7% budget cut for LAFD in the initial review of the 2024-25 budget, the City Council ultimately approved a $76 million union contract that would increase salary and benefits for union members from 2024 to 2025 and allocated another $58 million for fire equipment purchases.
Misinformation extended beyond budget issues, too, with viral posts on RedNote alleging that the Palisades’ Santa Ynez reservoir had been empty for nearly a year, leaving many fire hydrants dry and putting firefighters’ lives at risk. False AI-generated photos and manipulated videos further fueled this inaccurate claim.
It's true that the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been under renovation for almost a year, yet Department of Water and Power (DWP) officials clarified that this was not the primary reason for water shortages during the fire. “Would Santa Ynez [Reservoir] have helped? Yes, to some extent. Would it have saved the day? I don’t think so,” said Martin Adams, former general manager of the DWP, according to the LA Times. A DWP spokesperson noted that urban water infrastructure, including LA’s, was never designed to handle wildfires consuming entire neighborhoods.
The disinformation was further politicized, with right-wing figures calling for the resignation of Mayor Bass, and President Donald Trump amplifying the narrative and repeating his past threat to cut wildfire aid to California.
The use of AI in false information
Many influencers created generative AI videos that exploited the uncertainty and alarm around the LA fires and circulated them on WeChat and RedNote. These videos featured images, such as the iconic Hollywood sign engulfed in flames. Other clips falsely showed images of looting, for instance of a Black man carrying bags with smoke rising behind him, and two men carrying a television into a house.
All of these images and videos were later debunked by Piyaoba and USA Today.
“One common tactic influencers use is creating a narrative first and finding related footage later,” said Niu. These narratives, she continued, often perpetuate anti-Black and anti-immigrant sentiment, as such topics tend to garner the most views and engagement on social media platforms.
Unhealthy media environment
When Piyaoba launched in 2022, the nonprofit fact-checking group identified over 150 accounts across social media platforms including X, WeChat, Telegram, and YouTube, dedicated to spreading Chinese-language mis- and disinformation. Among them were two of the largest media giants targeting Chinese Americans: the Epoch Times and Guo Media Group, the latter co-founded by billionaire Wengui Guo and former Trump administration strategist Steve Bannon. Meanwhile, Piyaoba found fewer than 10 accounts at the time dedicated to fact-checking and providing credible information in Chinese.
“Conspiracy theories and the platforms are parts of the information ecosystem; they live off each other,” Niu said, highlighting the difficulties in combating disinformation, especially after Meta’s recent announcement to remove their third-party fact-checking programs.
The more time a user spends engaging with controversial topics on social platforms, the more related content will be fed into their page.
In contrast to the English-language media landscape, which still offers a wealth of open-source information that is well-researched and generally adheres to journalistic standards — despite varying political leanings — Chinese media has suffered from a long-term erosion of trust. It is often dominated by imbalanced narratives that leave little room for critical discourse, making it increasingly difficult for the public to access fact-based, nuanced reporting. “The Chinese media environment lacks independent and professional newsrooms,” Niu warned.
This dynamic was evident in the spread of misinformation surrounding the LA fire. Sensationalized articles and social media posts, fueled by a lack of diverse viewpoints, distorted facts about the fire and its aftermath. Rather than providing a balanced perspective, one-sided media coverage amplified fears, reinforced false narratives, and deepened political divides.
This not only misled the public but also undermined trust in official guidance, potentially hindering effective wildfire response and preparedness and efforts to hold the powerful accountable.
