Findings show a clear partisan split in exposure to political elites who make false claims and reveal that users who follow elites with high falsity scores are more likely to share misinformation themselves
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- When talking about misinformation online, viral "fake news" has gotten the lion's share of attention. But what happens when political elites themselves propagate falsehoods online?
Users who follow political elites with high falsity scores on Twitter are more likely to share misinformation themselves
In a new paper published in Nature Communications, MIT Sloan School of Management professor David Rand and research affiliate Mohsen Mosleh developed a falsity scoring system for political elites—influential political players and organizations—and a method for estimating individual Twitter users' exposure to misinformation from those elites.
Those tools, which Rand and Mosleh have made public via a web app that allows people to check the misinformation exposure rating and ideological bias of any Twitter user and an API for researchers, show that users who follow political elites with high falsity scores are more likely to share misinformation. They also reveal a clear partisan difference in exposure to politicians who make false claims.
In their study, the researchers identified 816 political elites—among them, all sitting U.S. congressmen and senators—on Twitter and used ratings by public fact-checking database Politifact to...
Welcome to Reality Check, NewsGuard’s nonpartisan newsletter that tracks the false claims and conspiracy theories that shape our world — and who’s behind them. Please support us by becoming a premi...