Fake News Shared During the Election

How was Fake News shared on Facebook during the 2016 election? Data and Method: - Representative online panel survey (N = 3500) - Only 2711 of the respondents use Facebook 2 “ We are interested in the news people have read and shared on Facebook this year. To save time and to get the most accurate information, with your permission we can learn this directly from Facebook. Facebook has agreed to help this way. Of course, we would keep this information confidential, just like everything else you tell us.” 3 Facebook Data Parsing of raw Facebook profile data and identified the domains of any links posted by respondents to their own timelines. Fake News Combination of two lists that identify fake news domains and stories specifically debunked by factchecking organizations 4 BuzzFeed List without hard news domains: (1) usanewsflash.com (2) abcnews.com.co (3) denverguardian.com (4) americanmilitarynews.com (5) truepundit.com (6) redstatewatcher.com (7) worldpoliticus.com (8) subjectpolitics.com (9) conservativestate.com (10) conservativedailypost.com (11) libertywritersnews.com (12) worldnewsdailyreport.com (13) endingthefed.com (14) donaldtrumpnews.co. (15) yesimright.com (16) burrardstreetjournal.com (17) bizstandardnews.com (18) everynewshere.com (19) departed.co. (20) rickwells.us (21) tmzhiphop.com 5 Findings: Sharing articles from fake news domains: Rare 6 Findings: Demographic characteristic that has the most consistent effect on sharing fake news: Age 7 Potential explanations 1. Older individuals lack digital media literacy necessary to reliably determine the trustworthiness of news 2. Effect of aging on memory Limitations ￮ Unknown composition of respondents’ Facebook News Feeds. 9 Future research Will the age factor hold up? If yes what could be the cause? 1. Lack of digital or media literacy 2. Cognitive abilities and memory The unobserved Newsfeed Is there a relationship between consumption and spreading? Solution? If media literacy is a factor, how can it be overcome? 10 Questions: ￮ How were respondents selected? ￮ Will the data of 2711 respondents who actually use Facebook be a good representation of the entire population? ￮ Does the amount of time one has been using Facebook affect whether a user shares fake news or not? ￮ Is this all black or white? 11