Sharing News Left and Right: The Effects of Policies Targeting Misinformation on Social Media

Daniel Ershov and Juan Morales

No 651, Carlo Alberto Notebooks from Collegio Carlo Alberto

Abstract: We study Facebook’s and Twitter’s policy interventions which aimed to reduce the spread of misinformation during the 2020 US election. Facebook changed its news feed algorithm to reduce the visibility of content, while Twitter changed its user interface, nudging users to be thoughtful about sharing content. Using data on tweets and Facebook posts published by news media outlets, we show both policies significantly reduced news sharing, but the reductions varied heterogeneously by outlets’ factualness and political slant. On Facebook, content sharing fell relatively more for low-factualness outlets. On Twitter, content sharing fell relatively more for left-wing and high-factualness outlets.

Keywords: social media; news sharing; media slant; fake news; misinformation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 L82 L86 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: pages 40
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-ict, nep-pay and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Sharing News Left and Right: Frictions and Misinformation on Twitter (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cca:wpaper:651

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