Working Paper: NBER ID: w25500
Authors: Hunt Allcott; Matthew Gentzkow; Chuan Yu
Abstract: In recent years, there has been widespread concern that misinformation on social media is damaging societies and democratic institutions. In response, social media platforms have announced actions to limit the spread of false content. We measure trends in the diffusion of content from 569 fake news websites and 9,540 fake news stories on Facebook and Twitter between January 2015 and July 2018. User interactions with false content rose steadily on both Facebook and Twitter through the end of 2016. Since then, however, interactions with false content have fallen sharply on Facebook while continuing to rise on Twitter, with the ratio of Facebook engagements to Twitter shares decreasing by 60 percent. In comparison, interactions with other news, business, or culture sites have followed similar trends on both platforms. Our results suggest that the relative magnitude of the misinformation problem on Facebook has declined since its peak.
Keywords: Misinformation; Social Media; Fake News; Political Science
JEL Codes: L0; L82; P16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Changes implemented by Facebook (Y60) | Decline in interactions with misinformation on Facebook (Z13) |
| User interactions with content from fake news websites (C91) | Increased interactions on Facebook and Twitter until end of 2016 (Z13) |
| User interactions with content from fake news websites (C91) | Decline in interactions on Facebook after 2016 (Z13) |
| User interactions with content from fake news websites (C91) | Continued rise in interactions on Twitter (Z13) |