Between artificially generated fakes, character assassination campaigns and tactics with names like “crisis profiteering” and “cynicism bombing,” Black voters are encountering a host of disinformation efforts ahead of the November midterm election. But public figures, organizations and others representing the powerful voting bloc — one long targeted by disenfranchisement campaigns — have been preparing a defense for months. Black influencers, some with more than a million followers on Instagram, Tik Tok and You Tube, warned against deceptive efforts to dissuade Black people from voting. The NAACP produced research and primers on race-based disinformation. Think tanks published playbooks to train voters to spot signs of manipulation and deception, while also calling for legislation to punish it.

Black voters, for years a reliable constituency for Democrats, are especially on edge following a series of legal and technological setbacks, political experts said. In the spring, the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, a landmark civil rights law, making way for Republican states to redraw their congressional maps and igniting fears of diluted Black representation. Artificial intelligence is also improving at warp speed, enabling fake content — including racist and unflattering portrayals of Black politicians and celebrities — to spread more quickly.

“In 2026, not only are we going to see all of this at a velocity that no previous generation has faced, we are seeing this at a moment in time where we cannot assume that there will be larger forces that can help stem this,” said Esosa Osa, the founder of Onyx Impact, a registered nonpartisan nonprofit group that works to protect Black communities from digital harms. “It’s going to need to be community-driven.” Ms. Osa spoke earlier this month at an online briefing about a “propaganda playbook” created by Onyx to address election disinformation. The 41-page field guide is meant to help voters, social media creators and others recognize what the organization calls “the most dangerous moment many communities have faced in the information environment in a generation.”

Efforts to suppress or manipulate Black political participation predates social media, but are now operating at higher speed, scale and precision, said Danielle A. Canty, the director of technology policy at the Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies. “Black Americans aren’t targeted because they’re uniquely gullible or susceptible to this — they’re targeted because the Black vote matters,” she said. Information manipulation is one technique, experts said, and A.I. is changing how it is carried out. A fake image of a polling location in a largely Black precinct closing early would be cheap to make, easy to spread and hard to authenticate, according to the Onyx playbook.