Exposure to untrustworthy websites in the 2016 US election

Although commentators frequently warn about echo chambers, little is known about the volume or slant of political misinformation that people consume online, the effects of social media and fact checking on exposure, or the effects of political misinformation on behaviour. Here, we evaluate these que...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature human behaviour 2020-05, Vol.4 (5), p.472-480
Main Authors: Guess, Andrew M., Nyhan, Brendan, Reifler, Jason
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
4014/4003
4014/4012
4014/4045
Adult
Behavioral Sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Campaigns
Communication
Electronic publishing
Experimental Psychology
False information
Female
Humans
Internet
Life Sciences
Male
Microeconomics
Middle Aged
Misinformation
Neurosciences
News
Personality and Social Psychology
Politics
Presidential elections
Social Media
Social networks
Supporters
Trust - psychology
United States
Websites
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Summary:Although commentators frequently warn about echo chambers, little is known about the volume or slant of political misinformation that people consume online, the effects of social media and fact checking on exposure, or the effects of political misinformation on behaviour. Here, we evaluate these questions for websites that publish factually dubious content, which is often described as fake news. Survey and web-traffic data from the 2016 US presidential campaign show that supporters of Donald Trump were most likely to visit these websites, which often spread through Facebook. However, these websites made up a small share of people’s information diets on average and were largely consumed by a subset of Americans with strong preferences for pro-attitudinal information. These results suggest that the widespread speculation about the prevalence of exposure to untrustworthy websites has been overstated. Guess, Nyhan and Reifler find that untrustworthy websites made up a small share of people’s information diets before the 2016 US election and were largely consumed by a subset of Americans with strong preferences for pro-attitudinal information.
ISSN:2397-3374
2397-3374
DOI:10.1038/s41562-020-0833-x