Advancement of Science: Investigation into the spread of fake news on Facebook

A new survey published by Andrew Guess, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua Tucker in the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that sharing stories from fake news is rarer than sharing links. According to the survey, more than 90% of Americans have never shared a story from fake news. From a measurement of fake news content, 8.5% of respondents have shared a fake news article with a friend.

The researchers further investigated differences in fake news sharing behavior. Republicans and Americans who describe themselves as independents were more willing to share stories from fake news.

On average, conservative respondents shared 0.75 fake news stories, while very conservative respondents shared 1.0.

The survey also found that Americans who like to share content are less likely to share fake news articles with friends. This shows that fake news sharing is not simple, and respondents do not share just any content. This is consistent with the hypothesis that those who share a lot of links are often familiar with the content they see and are good at distinguishing fake news from real news.

Another important finding of the survey is that fake news sharing on Facebook is closely related to age. Those over 65 shared an average of 0.75 fake news articles, twice as much as the next younger age group. Excluding the influence of other variables such as education, the oldest group is 7 times more likely to share fake news than the youngest group. In addition, the elderly are also more likely to share fake news links, 3-4 times more likely than the youngest group.

in conclusion

Sharing fake news stories was rare overall, but older Americans were more likely to do so, a trend that persisted even after accounting for education, party affiliation, ideology and overall sharing activity.

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