Republicans and Independents were more likely to share news than Democrats. Age correlated positively with fake news dissemination and the correlation remained significant after controlling for ideology and political orientation, education and total number of web links. Sex, race, education, income, political knowledge and total number of web links weren’t reliable predictors.

Predictors of fake news dissemination (results by Guess et al., 2019)

Among the 1191 participants, fake news dissemination was rare. Only 8.5% shared links to fake news domains. 

Kalamazoo College

What characteristics are associated with sharing fake news articles during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign?

Research question of "prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on fb" (Guess et al., 2019)

Guess et al. (2018): approximately 27% of Americans had consumed at least one fake news article over the five weeks before the U.S. presidential election in 2016. Fourney et al. (2016): ca. 0.34% of Microsoft Explorer users (who agreed to anonymously share their internet usage) visited a fake news domain in a day. Grinberg et al. (2019): on twitter, ca. 5% of political content originates from fake news sources in 2016. Guess et al. (2018): 0.01 % of tweets contained fake news during the French presidential election in 2017. 

Even thought these statistics have their limitations and are difficult to interpret, one can say that only a small amount of social media content is fake news and only a small amount of social media users is responsible for the huge dissemination of fake news.

Prevalence of Misinformation

Guess, A., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. (2019). Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook. Science advances, 5(1).

Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on fb (Guess et al., 2019)

Correlational study: Online survey about demographics and political beliefs linked to observational data of participant's fb sharing history during the campaign. Prevalence of fake news dissemination was measured by comparing shared external links to lists of fake news publishers (lists by Craig Silverman and his team at BuzzFeed, Allcott & Gentzkow and Zimdars). N = 1191. 

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