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Hyperpartisan political Facebook pages and websites are consistently feeding their millions of followers false or misleading information, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News. The review of more than 1,000 posts from six large hyperpartisan Facebook pages selected from the right and from the left also found that the least accurate pages generated some of the highest numbers of shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook — far more than the three large mainstream political news pages analyzed for comparison.
Our analysis of three hyperpartisan right-wing Facebook pages found that 38% of all posts were either a mixture of true and false or mostly false, compared to 19% of posts from three hyperpartisan left-wing pages that were either a mixture of true and false or mostly false. The right-wing pages are among the forces — perhaps as potent as the cable news shows that have gotten far more attention — that helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump.
These pages, with names such as Eagle Rising on the right and Occupy Democrats on the left, represent a new and powerful force in American politics and society. Many have quickly grown to be as large as — and often much larger than — mainstream political news pages. 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 rapid growth of these pages combines with BuzzFeed News’ findings to suggest a troubling conclusion: The best way to attract and grow an audience for political content on the world’s biggest social network is to eschew factual reporting and instead play to partisan biases using false or misleading information that simply tells people what they want to hear. This approach has precursors in partisan print and television media, but has gained a new scale of distribution on Facebook. And while it isn’t a solely American phenomenon — the British Labour party found powerful support from a similar voice — these pages are central to understanding a profoundly polarized moment in American life.
For example, in late September, Freedom Daily, a Facebook page with more than 1 million fans, scored a viral hit with a post that filled its audience with racial outrage.
The post linked to an article on the Freedom Daily website with the headline “Two White Men Doused With Gasoline, Set On FIRE By Blacks – Media CENSORED (VIDEO).” The text that accompanied the link on Facebook connected the attack to recent Black Lives Matter protests and urged people to share the post “if you’re angry as hell & aren’t going to take it anymore!”
Anyone clicking on the link saw a video of the altercation, with some additional commentary. “Back in the day, when people were a lot smarter and America was great, this would have been a lot different,” the article said.
But nowhere in the article or Facebook post did Freedom Daily make it clear that this incident happened almost a year ago, and that it had absolutely no connection to Black Lives Matter.
The falsehoods continued from there: The altercation was actually between two people, a black man and his co-worker — and perhaps most importantly, the co-worker is not white. Court documents allege that the fight began with the co-worker throwing the first punch. Prosecutors also said the second man caught fire as a result of him coming into contact with the first man who was engulfed in flames. And finally, in spite of the headline’s claim that the incident was “CENSORED” by the media, it was widely covered by Baltimore media as well as by CNN and the Daily Mail’s website. (The man who allegedly set the fire, Christopher Harrison Jr., was charged with attempted first-degree murder, reckless endangerment, and first- and second-degree assault.)
But these details only stood in the way of success on Facebook. In the end, Freedom Daily’s largely false post was shared more than 14,000 times, generating more than 9,000 reactions and over 2,000 angry comments on Facebook.
“Not even animals would do this,” reads the most liked comment on the post. “Time to hang these people.”
Pages like Freedom Daily play to the biases of their audiences — and to those of Facebook’s News Feed algorithm — by sharing videos, photos, and links that demonize opposing points of view. They write explosive headlines and passages that urge people to click and share in order to show their support, or to express outrage. And in this tense and polarizing presidential election season, they continue to grow and gain influence.
“They are, perhaps, the purest expression of Facebook’s design and of the incentives coded into its algorithm,” wrote John Herrman in the New York Times Magazine.
These pages are also a constant source of dubious, misleading, or completely false information.
During the period analyzed, right-wing pages, for example, pushed a conspiracy theory about a Hillary Clinton body double, recirculated an old and false story about a Canadian mayor lecturing Muslim immigrants about integration, wrongly claimed that Obama’s last address at the UN saw him tell Americans they needed to give up their freedom for a “New World Government,” and falsely claimed that a football player had been told not to pray by the NFL.
Left-wing pages wrongly claimed Putin’s online troll factory was responsible for rigging online polls to show Trump won the first debate, falsely said that Trump wants to expel all Muslims from the US and said US women in the military should expect to be raped, claimed that TV networks would “not be fact-checking Donald Trump in any way” at the first debate, and completely misrepresented a quote from the pope to claim that he “flat out called Fox News type journalism ‘terrorism.’”
The bottom line is that people who regularly consume information from these pages — especially those on the right — are being fed false or misleading information.
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.
What We Did
BuzzFeed News selected three large hyperpartisan Facebook pages each from the right and from the left, as well as three large mainstream political news pages. All nine pages have earned the coveted verified blue checkmark from Facebook, which gives them an additional layer of credibility on the platform.
The nine pages we analyzed. Fan numbers shown for each page are as of Oct. 17, 2016. BuzzFeed News
Over the course of seven weekdays (Sept. 19 to 23 and Sept. 26 and 27), we logged and fact-checked every single post published by these pages. Posts could be rated “mostly true,” “mixture of true and false,” or “mostly false.” If we encountered a post that was satirical or opinion-driven, or that otherwise lacked a factual claim, we rated it “no factual content.” (We chose to rate things as “mostly” true or false in order to allow for smaller errors or accurate facts within otherwise true or false claims or stories.)
We also gathered additional data: Facebook engagement numbers (shares, comments, and reactions) for each post were added from the Facebook API, and we noted whether the post was a link, photo, video, or text. Raters were asked to provide notes and sources to explain their rulings of “mixture of true and false” or “mostly false.” They could also indicate whether they were unsure of a given rating, which would trigger a second review of the same post in order to ensure consistency. Any discrepancies between the two ratings were resolved by a third person. That same person conducted a final review of all posts that were rated mostly false to ensure they warranted that rating. (For more detail on the methodology and some notes on its limitations, see the bottom of this article, and you can view our data here.)
In the end, our team rated and gathered data on 2,282 posts. There were 1,145 posts from mainstream pages, 666 from hyperpartisan right-wing pages, and 471 from hyperpartisan left-wing pages. The difference in the number of posts for each group is a result of them publishing with different frequencies.
Accuracy: Right vs. Left
All nine pages consisted largely of content that was either mostly true or earned a “no factual content” rating.
However, during the time period analyzed, we found that right-wing pages were more prone to sharing false or misleading information than left-wing pages. Mainstream pages did not share any completely false information, but did publish a small number of posts that included unverified claims. (More on that below.)
We rated 86 out of a total 666 right-wing Facebook posts as mostly false, for a percentage of 13%. Another 167 posts (25%) were rated as a mixture of true and false. Viewed separately or together (38%), this is an alarmingly high percentage.
Left-wing pages did not earn as many “mostly false” or “mixture of true and false” ratings, but they did share false and misleading content. We identified 22 mostly false posts out of a total of 471 from these pages, which means that just under 5% of left-wing posts were untrue. We rated close to 14% of these posts (68) a mixture of true and false. Taken together, nearly a fifth of all left-wing posts we analyzed were either partially or mostly false.
One of the most common reasons we rated a post as a mixture of true and false was because the headline and/or Facebook share line introduced misinformation or was misleading to the audience. This frequently took the form of a shared link that contained accurate body text paired with a misleading headline, likely to drive social engagement and clicks.
For example, the left-wing page Addicting Info shared an article with the headline “Trump Loses Support Of Police Union After Saying Tulsa Shooting Cop ‘Choked’ (VIDEO).” But contrary to the claim in the headline, the article makes it clear that Trump didn’t lose an endorsement. The executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police merely gave a quote that was slightly critical of something Trump said.
On the right, Freedom Daily posted a link to an article from the website Yes I’m Right. It carried the headline “Australia Voted To Ban Muslims And Liberals Are Pissed.” The story correctly reports on the results of a poll that asked Australians if they would support or oppose a ban on Muslim immigration to Australia. But there was no vote to ban Muslims, making the headline completely false. (Side note: As illustrated by that headline, pages on the right and the left both love to talk about how something that happened made the other side lose their minds, freak out, get totally shut down, etc.)
Alarmingly, we found examples of pages on the left and on the right presenting fake news articles as real. Two left-wing pages, Occupy Democrats and The Other 98%, posted a link to an article on U.S. Uncut that claimed the surgeon general of the US warned that drinking every time Trump lied during the first presidential debate could result in “acute alcohol poisoning.” That story was an aggregation of a satirical Raw Story article with the same information, published earlier that day. (“Please do your fact-checking as responsibly as possible,” joked the U.S. Uncut article that unwittingly presented false information as true.)
Right Wing News, a page with 3.3 million followers, shared a link to a story that claimed authorities in Charlotte had warned would-be rioters that their food stamps and other government benefits would be revoked if they were caught looting or rioting. That story came from the Baltimore Gazette, a fake news site.
Mainstream pages did not publish any mostly false content on the days we checked. We did, however, encounter one story that spread to all three mainstream pages as well as some partisan pages and remains unconfirmed to this day.
There were eight mainstream posts out of a total of 1,145 that earned the “mixture of true and false” rating. The majority of these were related to one story — the report from Politico that former President George H.W. Bush would be voting for Hillary Clinton.
Our ratings guide dictated that any posts built solely on anonymous sources or on unverified claims should be given the “mixture” rating. Since President Bush and his spokesman refused to confirm or deny the report, we rated all stories that repeated this claim the same way. Politico’s story about the former president was shared more than 14,000 times from its Facebook page, making it that page’s biggest hit during the period we analyzed. Overall, we saw a high number of Facebook shares for stories about the Bush voting claim. But the sample number is too small to make any larger conclusion about how unverified stories perform compared to true stories on mainstream pages.
Worst Offenders = High Engagement
Which pages shared the least credible information?
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.
Not coincidentally, Freedom Daily put up impressive Facebook engagement stats. It had by far the highest Facebook engagement (defined as the total number of reactions, likes, and shares) per post among the right-wing pages we studied. It ranked third among all nine pages for its median number of Facebook shares per post. (We considered shares to be the most important individual engagement metric, as Facebook itself has said it plays an important role in determining the spread of a post.)
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.
Occupy Democrats’ large number of fans means it theoretically has greater potential for engagement than the other pages. In the end, it did receive much higher Facebook engagement than any other page.
While Freedom Daily received a median of 947 shares per post, Occupy Democrats saw a median of 10,931. One factor in its impressive engagement numbers is the fact that Occupy Democrats consistently publishes native video to its page, which is an essential element in driving significant shares, likes, and reactions on Facebook.
The More Partisan or Misleading, the More Engagement
While the majority of the posts we rated from the partisan pages were mostly true, the mostly true posts typically did not perform as well as ones that were mostly false, were a mixture of true and false, or had no factual content. 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 87 shares on its mostly true posts, and its other posts had a median of 521 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.
The lack of partisan content, along with an overall factual approach, may play a role in the comparably lower engagement for mainstream pages. However, there are additional important factors to consider: Mainstream pages publish with greater frequency, which means each post has less time to get traction before the next one is published; they also overwhelmingly post links, rather than mixing in a significant volume of video and photo posts, which tend to perform better on Facebook. Video and photo posts made up a significant portion of the most popular posts we analyzed.
Memes and Joke Videos
We were surprised by the number of posts that met our “no factual content” criteria. Almost 19% of all posts analyzed from partisan pages fell into this category. These posts were often images or memes that expressed strongly partisan opinions. Here, for example, are memes that generated big engagement for Occupy Democrats and Right Wing News:
These memes and jokes often contained some of the most partisan opinions, and often consisted of attacks against liberals or conservatives. Many of them also took the form of attacks on Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or Barack Obama. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that we found posts rated “no factual content” received a very high median number of shares when compared with other post types on the partisan pages.
Humor videos also fell into this category and were the source of some of the biggest hits, particularly for left-wing pages. This Occupy Democrats scrape and repost of a Daily Show segment with Trump supporters received more than 1 million shares:
video at original link
Echo Chambers and Polarization
One thing we noticed when trying to fact-check posts was that these pages, and the websites connected to them, largely aggregate information from elsewhere. That wasn’t surprising. What was notable was that the right-wing pages almost never used mainstream news sources, instead pointing to other highly partisan sources of information. Even if the key information they were covering originally came from a mainstream source, they almost always linked to other partisan sources, which in turn often did the same.
For example, Right Wing News published and shared a story with the headline “NFL Boycott In FULL EFFECT! 44% Of Americans Will Stop Watching Football If Players Continue To Kneel… [VIDEO].” Its article linked to a story from Young Conservatives, which in turn linked to a Breitbart story, which itself was an aggregation of a poll conducted by Yahoo.
This was a contrast with the left-wing pages, which frequently pointed to articles from mainstream sources. Some may view this as validation of the long-held view of conservatives that mainstream media has a liberal bias. It’s also important to note that the right-wing pages we analyzed had a much higher percentage of false and misleading information compared to the mainstream and left-wing pages.
Based on our analysis, we found the hyperpartisan right-wing echo chamber to be more polarized than its counterpart on the left, and our sense is that this likely contributes to the tendency for right-wing Facebook pages to promote false and misleading information.
Devoted readers of these pages likely experience a version of the same echo chamber effect. The more they read and engage with these pages, the more Facebook will show them this content in their News Feeds. The more they click on the hyperpartisan websites, the more Google will show them search results from these sources. The result is that over time people will likely become more polarized because algorithms and friends continue to feed them information that pushes them further in this direction. This “group polarization” phenomenon is well-documented and has been shown to exist in studies of Facebook users.
The group of BuzzFeed News reporters who conducted this analysis found that in just a few days, our News Feeds and search results began to shift and align with the type of content we were checking. “The most interesting thing is that after a few days of fact-checking right-wing pages, my Google results started skewing to right-wing sites,” said one team member.
The reality is that people who frequent these hyperpartisan pages on the right and on the left exist in completely different segments of the online world, rarely interacting with or seeing what the other side is seeing. The more they rely on these pages for information, the more polarized they will likely become — and the more their worldviews will be based on information that is misleading or completely false.
CORRECTION
The fake news story about the surgeon general of the US warning that drinking every time Trump lied during the first presidential debate could result in “acute alcohol poisoning” originated on Raw Story. We incorrectly said it originated on National Report, but their hoax was published after the Raw Story piece. Oct. 20, 2016, at 9:42 p.m.
info about data etc etc at bottom of the link.
Makes me glad I'm not on Facebook.
It's fine as long as you don't go too deep. I use it to keep track of certain companies/podcasts and promote my short stories when they got published.
Also, I have a problem with that article, at least with the claims from the left. Trump actually did tweet that women should expect to be sexually assaulted when they join the military, and certain Trump-supporting online communities - who are suspected of being boosted by Russians - were rigging online polls with excessive voting and bots.
Never in my half century on this planet have I seen Russia thisclose and actively involved in POTUS elections.
Sell Ukraine Minuteman missiles as a response.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Makes me glad I'm not on Facebook.
Same.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/10/21 13:23:38
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
AFAIK many democratic (and even many not-quite-so-democratic) countries not only allow but invite foreign observers to have a look at voting procedures. It's totally normal.
Russian demands to send more monitors is not normal, more like a propaganda ploy. If Trump loses then surely it's because the Russians weren't allowed to monitor the places they suggested were of interest...
Ouze wrote: At first I thought the idea that Trump was a plant by the Democrats was another crazy right-wing theory. Now I'm not entirely sure. As implausible as it is, man, it's almost the only thing that would explain how Donald Trump has run his campaign.
I mean, I would/could believe that Trump ran to attempt to make the other republican candidates look too crazy, fail the primaries and walk away with a sweet pile of cash somewhere.... I don't think even he counted on actually winning anything.
Hyperpartisan political Facebook pages and websites are consistently feeding their millions of followers false or misleading information, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News. The review of more than 1,000 posts from six large hyperpartisan Facebook pages selected from the right and from the left also found that the least accurate pages generated some of the highest numbers of shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook — far more than the three large mainstream political news pages analyzed for comparison.
Our analysis of three hyperpartisan right-wing Facebook pages found that 38% of all posts were either a mixture of true and false or mostly false, compared to 19% of posts from three hyperpartisan left-wing pages that were either a mixture of true and false or mostly false. The right-wing pages are among the forces — perhaps as potent as the cable news shows that have gotten far more attention — that helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump.
These pages, with names such as Eagle Rising on the right and Occupy Democrats on the left, represent a new and powerful force in American politics and society. Many have quickly grown to be as large as — and often much larger than — mainstream political news pages. 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 rapid growth of these pages combines with BuzzFeed News’ findings to suggest a troubling conclusion: The best way to attract and grow an audience for political content on the world’s biggest social network is to eschew factual reporting and instead play to partisan biases using false or misleading information that simply tells people what they want to hear. This approach has precursors in partisan print and television media, but has gained a new scale of distribution on Facebook. And while it isn’t a solely American phenomenon — the British Labour party found powerful support from a similar voice — these pages are central to understanding a profoundly polarized moment in American life.
For example, in late September, Freedom Daily, a Facebook page with more than 1 million fans, scored a viral hit with a post that filled its audience with racial outrage.
The post linked to an article on the Freedom Daily website with the headline “Two White Men Doused With Gasoline, Set On FIRE By Blacks – Media CENSORED (VIDEO).” The text that accompanied the link on Facebook connected the attack to recent Black Lives Matter protests and urged people to share the post “if you’re angry as hell & aren’t going to take it anymore!”
Anyone clicking on the link saw a video of the altercation, with some additional commentary. “Back in the day, when people were a lot smarter and America was great, this would have been a lot different,” the article said.
But nowhere in the article or Facebook post did Freedom Daily make it clear that this incident happened almost a year ago, and that it had absolutely no connection to Black Lives Matter.
The falsehoods continued from there: The altercation was actually between two people, a black man and his co-worker — and perhaps most importantly, the co-worker is not white. Court documents allege that the fight began with the co-worker throwing the first punch. Prosecutors also said the second man caught fire as a result of him coming into contact with the first man who was engulfed in flames. And finally, in spite of the headline’s claim that the incident was “CENSORED” by the media, it was widely covered by Baltimore media as well as by CNN and the Daily Mail’s website. (The man who allegedly set the fire, Christopher Harrison Jr., was charged with attempted first-degree murder, reckless endangerment, and first- and second-degree assault.)
But these details only stood in the way of success on Facebook. In the end, Freedom Daily’s largely false post was shared more than 14,000 times, generating more than 9,000 reactions and over 2,000 angry comments on Facebook.
“Not even animals would do this,” reads the most liked comment on the post. “Time to hang these people.”
Pages like Freedom Daily play to the biases of their audiences — and to those of Facebook’s News Feed algorithm — by sharing videos, photos, and links that demonize opposing points of view. They write explosive headlines and passages that urge people to click and share in order to show their support, or to express outrage. And in this tense and polarizing presidential election season, they continue to grow and gain influence.
“They are, perhaps, the purest expression of Facebook’s design and of the incentives coded into its algorithm,” wrote John Herrman in the New York Times Magazine.
These pages are also a constant source of dubious, misleading, or completely false information.
During the period analyzed, right-wing pages, for example, pushed a conspiracy theory about a Hillary Clinton body double, recirculated an old and false story about a Canadian mayor lecturing Muslim immigrants about integration, wrongly claimed that Obama’s last address at the UN saw him tell Americans they needed to give up their freedom for a “New World Government,” and falsely claimed that a football player had been told not to pray by the NFL.
Left-wing pages wrongly claimed Putin’s online troll factory was responsible for rigging online polls to show Trump won the first debate, falsely said that Trump wants to expel all Muslims from the US and said US women in the military should expect to be raped, claimed that TV networks would “not be fact-checking Donald Trump in any way” at the first debate, and completely misrepresented a quote from the pope to claim that he “flat out called Fox News type journalism ‘terrorism.’”
The bottom line is that people who regularly consume information from these pages — especially those on the right — are being fed false or misleading information.
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.
What We Did
BuzzFeed News selected three large hyperpartisan Facebook pages each from the right and from the left, as well as three large mainstream political news pages. All nine pages have earned the coveted verified blue checkmark from Facebook, which gives them an additional layer of credibility on the platform.
The nine pages we analyzed. Fan numbers shown for each page are as of Oct. 17, 2016. BuzzFeed News
Over the course of seven weekdays (Sept. 19 to 23 and Sept. 26 and 27), we logged and fact-checked every single post published by these pages. Posts could be rated “mostly true,” “mixture of true and false,” or “mostly false.” If we encountered a post that was satirical or opinion-driven, or that otherwise lacked a factual claim, we rated it “no factual content.” (We chose to rate things as “mostly” true or false in order to allow for smaller errors or accurate facts within otherwise true or false claims or stories.)
We also gathered additional data: Facebook engagement numbers (shares, comments, and reactions) for each post were added from the Facebook API, and we noted whether the post was a link, photo, video, or text. Raters were asked to provide notes and sources to explain their rulings of “mixture of true and false” or “mostly false.” They could also indicate whether they were unsure of a given rating, which would trigger a second review of the same post in order to ensure consistency. Any discrepancies between the two ratings were resolved by a third person. That same person conducted a final review of all posts that were rated mostly false to ensure they warranted that rating. (For more detail on the methodology and some notes on its limitations, see the bottom of this article, and you can view our data here.)
In the end, our team rated and gathered data on 2,282 posts. There were 1,145 posts from mainstream pages, 666 from hyperpartisan right-wing pages, and 471 from hyperpartisan left-wing pages. The difference in the number of posts for each group is a result of them publishing with different frequencies.
Accuracy: Right vs. Left
All nine pages consisted largely of content that was either mostly true or earned a “no factual content” rating.
However, during the time period analyzed, we found that right-wing pages were more prone to sharing false or misleading information than left-wing pages. Mainstream pages did not share any completely false information, but did publish a small number of posts that included unverified claims. (More on that below.)
We rated 86 out of a total 666 right-wing Facebook posts as mostly false, for a percentage of 13%. Another 167 posts (25%) were rated as a mixture of true and false. Viewed separately or together (38%), this is an alarmingly high percentage.
Left-wing pages did not earn as many “mostly false” or “mixture of true and false” ratings, but they did share false and misleading content. We identified 22 mostly false posts out of a total of 471 from these pages, which means that just under 5% of left-wing posts were untrue. We rated close to 14% of these posts (68) a mixture of true and false. Taken together, nearly a fifth of all left-wing posts we analyzed were either partially or mostly false.
One of the most common reasons we rated a post as a mixture of true and false was because the headline and/or Facebook share line introduced misinformation or was misleading to the audience. This frequently took the form of a shared link that contained accurate body text paired with a misleading headline, likely to drive social engagement and clicks.
For example, the left-wing page Addicting Info shared an article with the headline “Trump Loses Support Of Police Union After Saying Tulsa Shooting Cop ‘Choked’ (VIDEO).” But contrary to the claim in the headline, the article makes it clear that Trump didn’t lose an endorsement. The executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police merely gave a quote that was slightly critical of something Trump said.
On the right, Freedom Daily posted a link to an article from the website Yes I’m Right. It carried the headline “Australia Voted To Ban Muslims And Liberals Are Pissed.” The story correctly reports on the results of a poll that asked Australians if they would support or oppose a ban on Muslim immigration to Australia. But there was no vote to ban Muslims, making the headline completely false. (Side note: As illustrated by that headline, pages on the right and the left both love to talk about how something that happened made the other side lose their minds, freak out, get totally shut down, etc.)
Alarmingly, we found examples of pages on the left and on the right presenting fake news articles as real. Two left-wing pages, Occupy Democrats and The Other 98%, posted a link to an article on U.S. Uncut that claimed the surgeon general of the US warned that drinking every time Trump lied during the first presidential debate could result in “acute alcohol poisoning.” That story was an aggregation of a satirical Raw Story article with the same information, published earlier that day. (“Please do your fact-checking as responsibly as possible,” joked the U.S. Uncut article that unwittingly presented false information as true.)
Right Wing News, a page with 3.3 million followers, shared a link to a story that claimed authorities in Charlotte had warned would-be rioters that their food stamps and other government benefits would be revoked if they were caught looting or rioting. That story came from the Baltimore Gazette, a fake news site.
Mainstream pages did not publish any mostly false content on the days we checked. We did, however, encounter one story that spread to all three mainstream pages as well as some partisan pages and remains unconfirmed to this day.
There were eight mainstream posts out of a total of 1,145 that earned the “mixture of true and false” rating. The majority of these were related to one story — the report from Politico that former President George H.W. Bush would be voting for Hillary Clinton.
Our ratings guide dictated that any posts built solely on anonymous sources or on unverified claims should be given the “mixture” rating. Since President Bush and his spokesman refused to confirm or deny the report, we rated all stories that repeated this claim the same way. Politico’s story about the former president was shared more than 14,000 times from its Facebook page, making it that page’s biggest hit during the period we analyzed. Overall, we saw a high number of Facebook shares for stories about the Bush voting claim. But the sample number is too small to make any larger conclusion about how unverified stories perform compared to true stories on mainstream pages.
Worst Offenders = High Engagement
Which pages shared the least credible information?
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.
Not coincidentally, Freedom Daily put up impressive Facebook engagement stats. It had by far the highest Facebook engagement (defined as the total number of reactions, likes, and shares) per post among the right-wing pages we studied. It ranked third among all nine pages for its median number of Facebook shares per post. (We considered shares to be the most important individual engagement metric, as Facebook itself has said it plays an important role in determining the spread of a post.)
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.
Occupy Democrats’ large number of fans means it theoretically has greater potential for engagement than the other pages. In the end, it did receive much higher Facebook engagement than any other page.
While Freedom Daily received a median of 947 shares per post, Occupy Democrats saw a median of 10,931. One factor in its impressive engagement numbers is the fact that Occupy Democrats consistently publishes native video to its page, which is an essential element in driving significant shares, likes, and reactions on Facebook.
The More Partisan or Misleading, the More Engagement
While the majority of the posts we rated from the partisan pages were mostly true, the mostly true posts typically did not perform as well as ones that were mostly false, were a mixture of true and false, or had no factual content. 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 87 shares on its mostly true posts, and its other posts had a median of 521 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.
The lack of partisan content, along with an overall factual approach, may play a role in the comparably lower engagement for mainstream pages. However, there are additional important factors to consider: Mainstream pages publish with greater frequency, which means each post has less time to get traction before the next one is published; they also overwhelmingly post links, rather than mixing in a significant volume of video and photo posts, which tend to perform better on Facebook. Video and photo posts made up a significant portion of the most popular posts we analyzed.
Memes and Joke Videos
We were surprised by the number of posts that met our “no factual content” criteria. Almost 19% of all posts analyzed from partisan pages fell into this category. These posts were often images or memes that expressed strongly partisan opinions. Here, for example, are memes that generated big engagement for Occupy Democrats and Right Wing News:
These memes and jokes often contained some of the most partisan opinions, and often consisted of attacks against liberals or conservatives. Many of them also took the form of attacks on Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or Barack Obama. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that we found posts rated “no factual content” received a very high median number of shares when compared with other post types on the partisan pages.
Humor videos also fell into this category and were the source of some of the biggest hits, particularly for left-wing pages. This Occupy Democrats scrape and repost of a Daily Show segment with Trump supporters received more than 1 million shares:
video at original link
Echo Chambers and Polarization
One thing we noticed when trying to fact-check posts was that these pages, and the websites connected to them, largely aggregate information from elsewhere. That wasn’t surprising. What was notable was that the right-wing pages almost never used mainstream news sources, instead pointing to other highly partisan sources of information. Even if the key information they were covering originally came from a mainstream source, they almost always linked to other partisan sources, which in turn often did the same.
For example, Right Wing News published and shared a story with the headline “NFL Boycott In FULL EFFECT! 44% Of Americans Will Stop Watching Football If Players Continue To Kneel… [VIDEO].” Its article linked to a story from Young Conservatives, which in turn linked to a Breitbart story, which itself was an aggregation of a poll conducted by Yahoo.
This was a contrast with the left-wing pages, which frequently pointed to articles from mainstream sources. Some may view this as validation of the long-held view of conservatives that mainstream media has a liberal bias. It’s also important to note that the right-wing pages we analyzed had a much higher percentage of false and misleading information compared to the mainstream and left-wing pages.
Based on our analysis, we found the hyperpartisan right-wing echo chamber to be more polarized than its counterpart on the left, and our sense is that this likely contributes to the tendency for right-wing Facebook pages to promote false and misleading information.
Devoted readers of these pages likely experience a version of the same echo chamber effect. The more they read and engage with these pages, the more Facebook will show them this content in their News Feeds. The more they click on the hyperpartisan websites, the more Google will show them search results from these sources. The result is that over time people will likely become more polarized because algorithms and friends continue to feed them information that pushes them further in this direction. This “group polarization” phenomenon is well-documented and has been shown to exist in studies of Facebook users.
The group of BuzzFeed News reporters who conducted this analysis found that in just a few days, our News Feeds and search results began to shift and align with the type of content we were checking. “The most interesting thing is that after a few days of fact-checking right-wing pages, my Google results started skewing to right-wing sites,” said one team member.
The reality is that people who frequent these hyperpartisan pages on the right and on the left exist in completely different segments of the online world, rarely interacting with or seeing what the other side is seeing. The more they rely on these pages for information, the more polarized they will likely become — and the more their worldviews will be based on information that is misleading or completely false.
CORRECTION
The fake news story about the surgeon general of the US warning that drinking every time Trump lied during the first presidential debate could result in “acute alcohol poisoning” originated on Raw Story. We incorrectly said it originated on National Report, but their hoax was published after the Raw Story piece. Oct. 20, 2016, at 9:42 p.m.
info about data etc etc at bottom of the link.
I remember my own little not very scientific experiment. After the first debate, I went to four major news sites the next morning: Fox, CNN, BBC, and NBC. All of them had a lot of front page coverage of the debate. But only one of them did not have a fact checking article in that coverage. Guess which one?
Yep, Fox.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ouze wrote: At first I thought the idea that Trump was a plant by the Democrats was another crazy right-wing theory. Now I'm not entirely sure. As implausible as it is, man, it's almost the only thing that would explain how Donald Trump has run his campaign.
It Trump really was a plant, then that says a lot about the Republican party, doesn't it? A real Trump is bad enough for the GOP, but if it's been a fake Trump all along, then that makes the GOP even worse.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/10/21 15:28:27
"Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds: Fire, walk with me." - Twin Peaks
"You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you Sheriff Truman." - Twin Peaks
AFAIK many democratic (and even many not-quite-so-democratic) countries not only allow but invite foreign observers to have a look at voting procedures. It's totally normal.
Russian demands to send more monitors is not normal, more like a propaganda ploy. If Trump loses then surely it's because the Russians weren't allowed to monitor the places they suggested were of interest...
There's a significant difference between inviting foreign observers and a foreign entity requesting to place monitors. It's odder still given the current US/Russia chill and even more noteworthy considering Donnie's rather beholding relationship with Putin and Russia. Toss the Russian DNC hacking into the mix and the dots start getting connected in a very suspicious pattern
I remember my own little not very scientific experiment. After the first debate, I went to four major news sites the next morning: Fox, CNN, BBC, and NBC. All of them had a lot of front page coverage of the debate. But only one of them did not have a fact checking article in that coverage. Guess which one?
Yep, Fox.
Interestingly, we were discussing the issue of "fact-checking" and the potential role it may have going forward during my history class yesterday (this is a pre-capstone class, so it's an extremely open environment where this sort of thing is easily discussed) We're not sure what that will be, because since we've had a number of these sites come up over the past couple years (and this definitely seems to be the first full presidential election where fact checkers are getting in almost real-time), we haven't seen an increase in the "quality" of politician yet, and we can begin to perhaps see issues arising in the future wherein some fact checking sites become bought by some party or another... Also, they don't seem to account for the possibility of a person "growing" and changing their opinion based on new facts, or meeting certain people, etc.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: I mean, I would/could believe that Trump ran to attempt to make the other republican candidates look too crazy, fail the primaries and walk away with a sweet pile of cash somewhere.... I don't think even he counted on actually winning anything.
Nah anybody with ego of Trump with messiah complex cannot imagine LOSING.
Christina Ferguson was arrested in Amherst Junction, Wisconsin after interrupting what turned out to be a meeting of a local environmental organisation, Tomorrow River Conservation Club.
Witnesses claimed the 32-year-old entered the meeting at 9:30pm holding a “family-size jar of low-sodium, creamy natural Jif” peanut butter, shouting about how much she hated the Republican candidate.
. . .
“Peanut buttering is better than firebombing, and Trump plans on firebombing everybody in other countries,” Ms Ferguson reportedly said.
However, when she realised she had mistakenly identified the meeting as a Trump rally, she was remorseful saying she was “just fed up about the entire election.”
. . .
“Fortunately it wasn’t chunky peanut butter, so vehicles didn’t get scratched,” said Chief Deputy Dan Kontos.
I remember my own little not very scientific experiment. After the first debate, I went to four major news sites the next morning: Fox, CNN, BBC, and NBC. All of them had a lot of front page coverage of the debate. But only one of them did not have a fact checking article in that coverage. Guess which one?
Yep, Fox.
Interestingly, we were discussing the issue of "fact-checking" and the potential role it may have going forward during my history class yesterday (this is a pre-capstone class, so it's an extremely open environment where this sort of thing is easily discussed) We're not sure what that will be, because since we've had a number of these sites come up over the past couple years (and this definitely seems to be the first full presidential election where fact checkers are getting in almost real-time), we haven't seen an increase in the "quality" of politician yet, and we can begin to perhaps see issues arising in the future wherein some fact checking sites become bought by some party or another... Also, they don't seem to account for the possibility of a person "growing" and changing their opinion based on new facts, or meeting certain people, etc.
On the way home from work yesterday morning the radio had an interview with a Republican congress critter about the debate. He repeated one of Trump's claims and the reporter told him "actually, that claim has been fact checked a number of times and is actually wrong". The Republican flat out told him "I don't really care much about fact checking, I care more about how something feels, and this feels true".
The strange thing is that Trump called have won this election if he'd kept his mouth shut on building walls with Mexico and the horrendous comments against women, and the needless and stupid twitter fights...
He could have taken a reasoned and measured approach to immigration. He could have championed the common man against the establishment candidate that is Clinton (I'm well aware of Trump's background)
And his pragmatic approach to foreign policy is exactly what America needs right now at this time in history after 15 years of defeat and disaster abroad.
If he had done these things, this contest would have been neck and neck...
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
On the way home from work yesterday morning the radio had an interview with a Republican congress critter about the debate. He repeated one of Trump's claims and the reporter told him "actually, that claim has been fact checked a number of times and is actually wrong". The Republican flat out told him "I don't really care much about fact checking, I care more about how something feels, and this feels true".
The quote is basically the old fight "reason vs instinct". Some people trust their feelings more than their reason - and the opposite is also true. It's basically a question of personnality and how you apprehend the world through yourself.
Since feelings are more and more glorified through a lot of different medias, it's not surprising people think it's more important than reasoning. Especially when "Alpha Male" behavior is seen as being a mark of a true, strong leadership. Yeah, right. Totally to the right, indeed.
The problem is that doing so would have lost him the primary and probably killed his base turnout for the general. Trump got as far as he did because of the crazy. The GOP base has gone full blown crazy and thats who they want in the white house.
We see that in many down ticket races. The base has gone off the rails and centrists are knocked out in primariesm thats been an issue for almost a decade now. Centrist candidates have trouble making it through a primary and turning out their base to vote on election day.
The sad fact is that electibility is anathema to the Republican base.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: The strange thing is that Trump called have won this election if he'd kept his mouth shut on building walls with Mexico and the horrendous comments against women, and the needless and stupid twitter fights...
He could have taken a reasoned and measured approach to immigration. He could have championed the common man against the establishment candidate that is Clinton (I'm well aware of Trump's background)
And his pragmatic approach to foreign policy is exactly what America needs right now at this time in history after 15 years of defeat and disaster abroad.
If he had done these things, this contest would have been neck and neck...
But then Hillary would have lost, which is entirely not the point.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: The strange thing is that Trump called have won this election if he'd kept his mouth shut on building walls with Mexico and the horrendous comments against women, and the needless and stupid twitter fights...
He could have taken a reasoned and measured approach to immigration. He could have championed the common man against the establishment candidate that is Clinton (I'm well aware of Trump's background)
He didn't do any of that during the primaries, though. I'm not terribly surprised he didn't reel it in for the main show!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/10/21 16:53:35
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
If you don't see the difference between the same candidates palling around at the same social gatherings, and meeting for a public debate, I can't help you.
If you can't tell the difference between a campaign stop that presidential candidates have jointly been invited to for the better part of the past seventy years and "palling around" I might as well stop trying.
This kind of critical failure is how Trump got elected in the first place
People seem to think that means anything. It doesn't. The local election boards will certify results regardless of whether anyone accepts them or not (barring an injunction by SCOTUS). After that, the loser will just have to suck lemons.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/10/21 17:37:31
Which the media and HRC jumped on within seconds, despite Gore.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
I remember my own little not very scientific experiment. After the first debate, I went to four major news sites the next morning: Fox, CNN, BBC, and NBC. All of them had a lot of front page coverage of the debate. But only one of them did not have a fact checking article in that coverage. Guess which one?
Yep, Fox.
Interestingly, we were discussing the issue of "fact-checking" and the potential role it may have going forward during my history class yesterday (this is a pre-capstone class, so it's an extremely open environment where this sort of thing is easily discussed) We're not sure what that will be, because since we've had a number of these sites come up over the past couple years (and this definitely seems to be the first full presidential election where fact checkers are getting in almost real-time), we haven't seen an increase in the "quality" of politician yet, and we can begin to perhaps see issues arising in the future wherein some fact checking sites become bought by some party or another... Also, they don't seem to account for the possibility of a person "growing" and changing their opinion based on new facts, or meeting certain people, etc.
On the way home from work yesterday morning the radio had an interview with a Republican congress critter about the debate. He repeated one of Trump's claims and the reporter told him "actually, that claim has been fact checked a number of times and is actually wrong". The Republican flat out told him "I don't really care much about fact checking, I care more about how something feels, and this feels true".
I believe Benjamin Franklin put it most succinctly, "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” I will give this to them, Trump supporters are some of the hardest working people I've ever encountered.
Which the media and HRC jumped on within seconds, despite Gore.
You're not seriously comparing the two, are you?
They're worlds apart. If Trump manages to get with 5-10 electoral votes of Clinton, and then there's some dodgy vote counting, then you'd have a case.
But this is just stupid.
You're missing my point. Its almost like they were waiting for him to say it and intentionally had it as a question. Its almost like there's a list out there where everyone privately goes and discusses things, almost a journalist list. You could even abbreviate it and call it Journolist. Oh wait. . .
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/10/21 18:02:31
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
Primarily because he pulled the same stunt in the primaries at the first republican debates. He refused to say he would support the nominee no matter who it was, or promise not to run third party. That sets a precedent for the question, parti6 with his rigged election comments.
Gore's issue was very different, contesting specific issues in a specific race, not going out beforehand and talking about a rigged election weeks ahead of time.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/10/21 18:06:05
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
You're missing my point. Its almost like they were waiting for him to say it and intentionally had it as a question. Its almost like there's a list out there where everyone privately goes and discusses things, almost a journalist list. You could even abbreviate it and call it Journolist. Oh wait. . .
Of course they had it as a question. Trump pulled this stunt in the primary. And then he started saying he wouldn't accept the results of the general election because "rigging." So they asked this question at the end of the first debate. Trump had his usual word vomit, then Holt managed to get an answer out of Trump; that yes, he would respect the results of the election.
He then went on to immediately deny that he would respect the results of the election.
It's almost as though one presidential nominee calling the results of the election into question before anything's happened is dangerous to the foundations of our democracy, and he deserves to be nailed to the wall for saying anything like that.
It's almost like the kinds of questions that get asked at debates are completely predictable and someone clearly didn't do their homework.
FYI, "will you support the outcome of the election no matter who wins" is a question that has been asked of candidates since the 2000 election when Gore became one of the few runners for the office to actually challenge election results. Are people's memories seriously this short?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/10/21 18:10:34
" I'm sorry, but after 7200 's that has to be the most annoying sign-off ever." 
