A recent field has delved into the spread of fake news on Facebook during the terminal six months of the 2016 presidential election campaign , and it seems only a modest percent of mass portion out connectedness to false article .
Around 1,300 the great unwashed used an app that allowed researchers to track link to external sites posted on their timeline . These were then compare to a database of “ bogus news ” source . As report inScience Advances , only 8.5 percent of Facebook exploiter in the US share at least one false clause between April and November 2016 . sure a pocket-sized routine share - wise , but it tally to almost 14.5 million people , given the drug user on Facebook based in the United States .
" Despite far-flung interest in the fake news phenomenon , we know very little about who actually shares bogus news , " co - author Joshua Tucker , a prof of political science at NYU , said in astatement . " This study takes a first pace towards answering this question . Perhaps most importantly , we find that sharing this eccentric of subject matter on Facebook was a relatively rare activity during the 2016 presidential movement . "
Education , income , and grammatical gender come out not to be related to the proclivity to share simulated news , but a stiff discriminant was age . The researchers chance that 11 pct of those over the age of 65 shared bogus news show compared to 3 per centum of those in the 18 - 29 eld bracket .
" If seniors are more probable to partake in fake news than younger people , then there are important implication for how we might project interventions to reduce the cattle farm of fake news program , " explain lead writer Andrew Guess , an adjunct prof of politics and public affairs at Princeton University .
Another agent highlighted by the research team was a unassailable partisan departure between those who shared fake news and those who did n’t . simulated news links were shared by 18 pct of mass who identified themselves as Republican but only by less than 4 per centum of people who identify themselves as Democrats . This should n’t be interpreted as a simple “ Republicans are more gullible ” . The amount of fake news show in the election campaign was definitely pro - Trump and anti - Clinton and people tend to apportion things that confirm their biases .
" This is consistent with the pro - Trump slant of most fake news program articles produced during the 2016 campaign , " they write , " and of the tendency of respondents to share articles they consort with , and thus might not represent a gravid tendency of conservative to apportion faux news than liberals conditional on being exposed to it . "
