One message at a time, La Chama chatbot combats falsehoods

Published February 2023

To reduce misinformation among Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Boa Vista, Brazil, UNHCR launched the La Chama chatbot in 2021.

Today, this automated WhatsApp messaging tool is providing essential, reliable and timely information to more than 10,000 displaced people.

La Chama, a Venezuelan term for “young woman”, was created to provide answers to the concerns held by Venezuelans in Brazil and thereby limit the spread of misinformation and disinformation.

To ensure accessibility, the information given by La Chama is delivered in audio and video as well as written text. The content was developed with the support of “La Voz de los Refugiados”, a community radio set up with the support of UNHCR and AVSI Brasil.

The themes covered by the chatbot – including documentation, COVID-19 prevention and tips for finding work – were identified through surveys with the target audience of Venezuelans on the move. 

In addition to the chatbot, La Chama also enables refugees and migrants to ask questions directly to UNHCR, enabling them a quick route to stamping out potential falsehoods.

“I’m really excited about this discovery of La Chama,” said Azalia, a Venezuelan in Brazil. “Because I am, as they say, a WhatsApp fanatic. A Facebook fanatic. And this channel that [UNHCR] created is very important to me, because it allows us direct communication – a communication that I thought was already missing.”

Read the original story on the launch of La Chama. [Available in Portuguese only.]