Social Media & Society

The New York Times Magazine

Facebook, in the years leading up to this election, hasn’t just become nearly
ubiquitous among American internet users; it has centralized online news
consumption in an unprecedented way. According to the company, its site is
used by more than 200 million people in the United States each month, out of
a total population of 320 million. A 2016 Pew study found that 44 percent
of Americans read or watch news on Facebook. These are approximate
exterior dimensions and can tell us only so much. But we can know, based on
these facts alone, that Facebook is hosting a huge portion of the political
conversation in America.

Huge Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages Are Pushing False And Misleading

Info (BuzzFeed)

News analysis found that three big right-wing Facebook pages published false
or misleading information 38% of the time during the period analyzed, and
three large left-wing pages did so in nearly 20% of posts.

A recent feature in the New York Times Magazine reported on the growth
and influence of these pages, saying they “have begun to create and refine a
new approach to political news: cherry-picking and reconstituting the
most effective tactics and tropes from activism, advocacy and journalism
into a potent new mixture.”

The nature of the falsehoods is important to note. They often take the
form of claims and accusations against people, companies, police,
movements such as Black Lives Matter, Muslims, or “liberals” or
“conservatives” as a whole. They drive division and polarization. And
in doing so, they generate massive Facebook engagement that brings
more and more people to these pages and their websites and into the
echo chamber of hyperpartisan media and beliefs.

Examples:

1. Freedom Daily, with its 1.3 million fans, was the most inaccurate and
misleading page during the period we analyzed. It had the highest
percentage of false posts of any page, at 23%, and also saw the same
percentage of “mixture of true and false” posts. That means 46% —
nearly half — of its total output during the seven days we studied was
rated as false or misleading.

2. Occupy Democrats was the largest page we analyzed, with 4 million

fans, and was rated as the least accurate left-wing page. It had 9 mostly
false posts out of a total of 209, accounting for 4% of its output. Just
under 16% of its posts (33) were a mixture of true and false. In the end, a
fifth of its posts were false or misleading, according to our analysis.

The more overtly partisan, misleading, or opinion- driven a post was, the more
engagement the post would see, according to our data. Facebook, and the
people using it, appears to reward the worst tendencies of these pages.

For example, Occupy Democrats saw a median of 7,755 shares for its
mostly true posts, whereas all other post types received a median of
13,330 shares. Right Wing News — the largest right-wing page, at 3.3
million fans — received a median of 91 shares on its mostly true posts,
and its other posts had a median of 568 shares.
The mainstream political news pages we analyzed received a fraction of
the engagement of the partisan pages. CNN Politics was the largest
mainstream page we analyzed, with more than 1.8 million fans. It had a
median of 50 shares per post during the period we analyzed, the highest
number for any mainstream page.