Trends in the Diffusion of Misinformation on Social Media

Abstract

We measure trends in the diffusion of misinformation on Facebook and Twitter between January 2015 and July 2018. We focus on stories from 570 sites that have been identified as producers of false stories. Interactions with these sites on both Facebook and Twitter rose steadily through the end of 2016. Interactions then fell sharply on Facebook while they continued to rise on Twitter, with the ratio of Facebook engagements to Twitter shares falling by approximately 60 percent. We see no similar pattern for other news, business, or culture sites, where interactions have been relatively stable over time and have followed similar trends on the two platforms both before and after the election. *

The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook

“…Our findings also differ from those of Allcott et al [1], who compared the Facebook reach of sites known for spreading false stories with that of other news, busi-ness or culture sites. The decrease of false stories they note since early 2017 is only partly reflected in the Dutch junk news data: Our data show that junk news pages have become increasingly active in publishing posts in the second half of 2017, with a steep growth since September 2017.…”

“…Studying data that cover one year (2017), Fletcher et al [9] did not study the longitudinal development of fake news. Covering a larger time span (Jan. 2015 -July 2018), Allcott et al [1] measure the volume of Facebook user's engagements with sites known to spread false stories and compare this to developments in the reach of mainstream news sites and business and culture sites. After an initial rise in fake news engagement, this declined sharply from the beginning of 2017 onwards.…”

“…However, we have also observed that the numbers of reactions, comments and shares for junk news pages have decreased since the summer of 2017. We speculate that there might be a relation with Facebook's efforts to reduce the visibility of junk news on the platform (listed in Allcott et al [1], Appendix, Table 1). In May 2017, Facebook announced that "misinformation, sensationalism, clickbait and posts that fall outside of [their] Community Standards" will be demoted [8].…”

Experiences of online breastfeeding support: Support and reassurance versus judgement and misinformation

“…Although causality is difficult to establish, high levels of social media use are associated with increased levels of depression (Lin et al, 2016), anxiety (Primack et al, 2017), and low self-esteem (Woods & Scott, 2016). Information shared online is not always accurate (Allcott, Gentzkow, & Yu, 2019), and women can feel like a failure comparing themselves with other mother stories (Brown, 2016). Conversations around breastfeeding online can become judgemental and polarised (Mecinska, 2018), particularly on open forums and comments sections (Grant, 2016).…”

Glasnost: Nine ways Facebook could become a better forum for free speech and democracy

“…Research has shown that the effects of fact-checking can be complex, and some have even argued that it can be counter-productive (Nyhan and Reifler, 2015;Lazer et al, 2018). But an important piece of research has suggested that Facebook's recent fact-checking efforts have had success in reducing the amount of misinformation in the average user's feed (Allcott, Gentzkow, and Yu, 2018). We welcome the fact that at the end of 2018 the little-i Context Button was launched globally and believe that significant resources should be dedicated to identifying the best, most authoritative, and trusted sources of contextual information for each country, region, and culture.…”