2019/01/04 by Andrew M. Guess, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua A. Tucker · 7 citations
Social Sciences · Computer Science · #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Social Media and Politics #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection
paper · doi:10.1126/sciadv.aau4586
openalex publication_date 2019/01/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
So-called "fake news" has renewed concerns about the prevalence and effects of misinformation in political campaigns. Given the potential for widespread dissemination of this material, we examine the individual-level characteristics associated with sharing false articles during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. To do so, we uniquely link an original survey with respondents' sharing activity as recorded in Facebook profile data. First and foremost, we find that sharing this content was a relatively rare activity. Conservatives were more likely to share articles from fake news domains, which in 2016 were largely pro-Trump in orientation, than liberals or moderates. We also find a strong age effect, which persists after controlling for partisanship and ideology: On average, users over 65 shared nearly seven times as many articles from fake news domains as the youngest age group.