Tashia Willie does not read a newspaper or watch television news. When the Texas Southern University senior wants to know what is happening in politics, she opens her phone.
“When I wake up, I usually check my phone, and I would see news,” Willie said. “But unfortunately, it would be mostly negative, whether it’s political or just daily messy news. It would be on Instagram or TikTok.”
With early voting in Texas starting, Willie’s routine reflects how many young Black people now learn about candidates and issues. Their political information increasingly comes from creators, podcasters, and comment sections rather than newsrooms, and much of it reaches them unchecked.
Nearly 4 in 10 U.S. adults under 30 regularly get news from news influencers, compared with about 1 in 5 adults overall, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center study. Among Black adults, the figure is 27%. A 2024 UNESCO survey of 500 content creators found 62% do not verify information before sharing it.
Willie is an administration of justice major and assistant secretary of the TSU NAACP chapter. She avoids gossip pages that mix celebrity drama with politics. For candidate details, she turns to her campus NAACP and official websites. Traditional outlets, she said, have lost young audiences.
“It’s just not entertaining for a lot of young Black people or young people in general,” Willie said. “It’s not entertaining, so it’s not going to get popularity or any type of views.”
Even political posts that reach her rarely explain the ballot.
“They’ll put little details here and there, but they won’t expand,” she said. “It’s a lot of research. It’s a lot of work when you think about it.”
From brunch to the ballot
Erika Harrison does some of that work for her audience. A licensed Texas attorney with a history degree and a law degree from the University of Missouri, Harrison launched her Black Girls Who Brunch platform more than 11 years ago to spotlight Black-owned restaurants in Houston.
After the 2024 election, as she tracked layoffs and federal cuts affecting Black women, including the loss of her own job, Harrison shifted more of her content toward politics. Her followers asked for it.
“It was kind of like the audience was saying, ‘Hey, can you talk about this? Hey, I’m confused. How do I sign up to vote?” Harrison said. “It was very much a natural progression.”
She warns followers about relying on TikTok for news.
“Any clown can get in front of a camera and start talking,” Harrison said. “There’s not this kind of vetting and accountability that you have from established newsrooms.”
Her own rule is to wait. She does not post rumors, and if she cannot find a news story to cite, she usually skips the topic. A six-week News Creator Corps fellowship, which she called a crash course in journalistic ethics and sourcing, sharpened those habits. She learned what the algorithm rewards.
“It loves to push anger,” Harrison said. “It loves to push mess. It loves to push conflict between other Black people.”
That gap between engaging content and verified reporting concerns Hannah Covington, senior director of education content at the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit. In the group’s 2024 national survey, Black teens were the most likely to say they keep up with the news, but 8 in 10 teens said journalists are as biased as or more biased than other content creators.
“We’re fundamentally in an information war. We’re in a war for our own reality.”
Esosa Osa, founder and CEO of Onyx Impact
“Content creators aren’t necessarily prioritizing accuracy and fairness the same way that responsible news organizations are,” Covington said in an email to the Defender. “Just because a video feels newsy or someone is talking about the news does not mean it’s responsible journalism.”
Creators can practice responsible journalism, but their credibility has to be evident in their work. She encourages young people to check whether a creator cites multiple credible sources, talks to people in a position to know, and corrects mistakes.
“Understand that likes, shares, and views do not equal credibility,” she said. “Ask whether there is evidence of original reporting.”
Slow down before you share
Esosa Osa, founder and CEO of Onyx Impact, a nonprofit research, media, and technology organization that works to protect Black communities from online propaganda, studies how false narratives reach Black voters. People get their information wherever they spend the most time, and for young voters, that is social media.
“We’re fundamentally in an information war,” Osa said. “We’re in a war for our own reality.”
Propaganda has toppled governments and communities throughout history, she said. What has changed is how fast and how far it travels.
Osa warned against relying on old tricks such as checking an image for extra fingers. The obviously fake images people mock online are the worst AI has to offer, and the best tools already fool most viewers.
Instead, Onyx’s Propaganda Playbook teaches a quick “receipts check,” Osa said she uses every day while scrolling. First, find the source.
“If it takes you 10 minutes to figure out where this information came from, pause,” she said. “If it makes you feel very angry, very sad, very happy, again, pause before you share.”
The third step is to ask who benefits if the information spreads widely.
Osa also sees a role for the Black press. News outlets must reach readers on social media while building direct connections, such as newsletters, that no platform controls. Onyx’s AI assistant, Aisha, gives users a list of local news outlets to follow when they type in their state.
“These platforms can also shut down creators, can shut down news organizations in a day,” Osa said. “So how do we make sure we’re building lists outside of that?”
Onyx tracks false narratives aimed at Black voters state by state, and Texas, which she noted lacks strong voter access protections, is fertile ground for messages designed to make voting seem harder or to make people afraid to show up. Because much of that misinformation is timed for Election Day, she urged Texans to vote early.
“If you have already voted before then, there’s nothing people can do to you anymore,” Osa said. “There’s no disinformation narrative that can impact your vote anymore.”
