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The Diffusion and Reach of (Mis)Information on Facebook During the U.S. 2020 Election
While misinformation related to the U.S. 2020 election relied on virality from a small subset of users, it spread more slowly on Facebook compared to other political content. This was partly due to differences in the ways that misinformation is shared and by whom, in addition to periods of aggressive content moderation from the platform ahead of the election.
Citation
González-Bailón, Sandra, David Lazer, Pablo Barberá, William Godel, Hunt Allcott, Taylor Brown, Adriana Crespo-Tenorio, Deen Freelon, Matthew Gentzkow, et al. "The Diffusion and Reach of (Mis)Information on Facebook During the U.S. 2020 Election." Sociological Science (2024). http://dx.doi.org/10.15195/v11.a41.
Date Posted
Dec 11, 2024
Authors
- Sandra González-Bailón,
- David Lazer,
- Pablo Barberá,
- William Godel,
- Hunt Alcott,
- Taylor Brown,
- Adriana Crespo-Tenorio,
- Deen Freelon,
- Matthew Gentzkow,
- Andrew M. Guess,
- Shanto Iyengar,
- Young Mie Kim,
- Neil Malhotra,
- Devra Moehler,
- Brendan Nyhan,
- Jennifer Pan,
- Carlos Velasco Rivera,
- Jaime Settle,
- Emily Thorson,
- Rebekah Tromble,
- Arjun Wilkins,
- Magdalena Wojcieszak,
- Chad Kiewiet De Jong,
- Annie Franco,
- Winter Mason,
- Natalie Jomini Stroud,
- Joshua A. Tucker
Area of Study
Abstract
Social media creates the possibility for rapid, viral spread of content, but how many posts actually reach millions? And is misinformation special in how it propagates? We answer these questions by analyzing the virality of and exposure to information on Facebook during the U.S. 2020 presidential election. We examine the diffusion trees of the approximately 1 B posts that were re-shared at least once by U.S.-based adults from July 1, 2020, to February 1, 2021. We differentiate misinformation from non-misinformation posts to show that (1) misinformation diffused more slowly, relying on a small number of active users that spread misinformation via long chains of peer-to-peer diffusion that reached millions; non-misinformation spread primarily through one-to-many affordances (mainly, Pages); (2) the relative importance of peer-to-peer spread for misinformation was likely due to an enforcement gap in content moderation policies designed to target mostly Pages and Groups; and (3) periods of aggressive content moderation proximate to the election coincide with dramatic drops in the spread and reach of misinformation and (to a lesser extent) political content.