Facebook False News in US Election Reached More Conservatives, Study Says
Multiple studies aim to understand Facebook’s impact on elections
Facebook’s election information page in 2020.
Photographer: Gabby Jones/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Researchers observed conservatives engaging more with false news stories on Facebook than liberals during the US 2020 presidential election, according to a new study published Thursday in the academic journal Science — one of the first revelations in a massive research project to understand Facebook’s impact on democracy.
Meta Platforms Inc., Facebook’s parent company, provided internal data to 17 independent researchers from New York University, the University of Texas at Austin and ten other academic institutions which aim to examine the role of social media in American democracy, particularly during the 2020 elections.