We provide a weekly briefing about the spread of misinformation across six social media platforms.For the seven days priorto 11-11-2020 we find:
The social media distribution network of all articles from the top fifteen mainstream news outlets reached just below three billion social media users this week, achieving much greater distribution than state-backed and junk news sources. The average article from state-backed sources reached over 8,200 users, while the average article from mainstream sources reached over 4,400 users and the average junk health article reached over 2,300 users.
Similarly, aggregate content from mainstream sources gets the largest amount of total user engagement. However, on a per article basis, state-backed news receives over 500 engagements and junk news receives over 1,600, while average articles from mainstream sources get over 350 engagements.
Our data collection shows false claims on voter registration in Pennsylvania reached up to 28.3 million individuals on social media.
The most prominent junk news and state-backed topics, in descending order, were attacks on the political left, Republican elected officials’ responses to election results, China’s International Import Expo, misinformation on electoral fraud across a number of US states, Pfizer’s recent vaccine candidate, photos of the week, and general coronavirus statistics.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
