Social media and fake news in the 2016 election

Journal of Economic Perspectives

Volumn 31, Issue 2, 2017, Pages 211-236

  Allcott, Hunt ^a,c   Gentzkow, Matthew ^b,c  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85019053509     PISSN: None     EISSN: 08953309     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1257/jep.31.2.211     Document Type: Review

References (71)

1. Abramowitz, Alan I., and Kyle L. Saunders. 2008. "Is Polarization a Myth?" Journal of Politics 70(2): 542-55.
2. American Enterprise Institute. 2013. "Public Opinion on Conspiracy Theories." AEI Public Opinion Study. Compiled by Karlyn Bowman and Andrew Rugg. November, https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/-public-opinionon-conspiracy-theories-181649218739.pdf.
3. American National Election Studies. 2010. Times Series Cumulative Data File [dataset]. Produced and distributed by Stanford University and the University of Michigan. http://www.electionstudies.org/studypages/anes-timeseries-cdf/anes-timeseries-cdf.htm.
4. Bagdikian, Ben H. 1983. The Media Monopoly. Beacon Press.
5. Bakshy, Eytan, Solomon Messing, and Lada A. Adamic. 2015. "Exposure to Ideologically Diverse News and Opinion on Facebook." Science 348(6239): 1130-32.
6. Bartels, Larry M. 1993. "Messages Received: The Political Impact of Media Exposure." American Political Science Review 87(2): 267-85.
7. Berinsky, Adam J. 2017. "Rumors and Health Care Reform: Experiments in Political Misinformation." British Journal of Political Science 47(2): 241-62.
8. Brayton, Ed. 2016. "Please Stop Sharing Links to These Sites." Patheos, September 18. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2016/09/18/please-stop-sharing-links-to-these-sites/.
9. Bullock, John G., Alan S. Gerber, Seth J. Hill, and Gregory A. Huber. 2015. "Partisan Bias in Factual Beliefs about Politics." Quarterly Journal of Political Science 10(4): 519-78.
10. Buzz Feed News. No date. "Election Content Engagement." [A spreadsheet] https://docs. google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ysnzawW6pDG BEqbXqeYuzWa7Rx2mQUip6CXUUUk4jIk/edit#gid=1756764129.
11. Cassino, Dan, and Krista Jenkins. 2013. "Conspiracy Theories Prosper: 25% of Americans Are 'Truthers.'" Fairleigh Dickinson University's Public Mind Poll. January 17. http://publicmind. fdu.edu/2013/outthere.
12. Chapman University. 2016. "What Aren't They Telling Us?" Chapman University Survey of American Fears. October 11. https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2016/10/11/what-arent-theytelling-us/.
13. DellaVigna, Stefano, and Matthew Gentzkow. 2010. "Persuasion: Empirical Evidence." Annual Review of Economics 2: 643-69.
14. Della Vigna, Stefano, and Ethan Kaplan. 2007. "The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting." Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(3): 1187-1234.
15. Dewey, Caitlin. 2014. "This Is Not an Interview with Banksy." Washington Post, October 22. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/21/this-is-not-an-interview-withbanksy/? tid=a-inl&utm-term=.8a9 5d83438e9.
16. Dewey, Caitlin. 2016. "Facebook Fake-News Writer: 'I Think Donald Trump is in the White House because of Me.'" Washington Post, November, 17. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/17/facebook-fake-news-writer-i-think-donald-trump-isin-the-white-house-because-of-me/.
17. DiFonzo, Nicholas, and Prashant Bordia. 2007. Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches. American Psychological Association.
18. Enikolopov, Ruben, Maria Petrova, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya. 2011. "Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia." American Economic Review 101(7): 3253-85.
19. Eventbrite. 2012. "Social Commerce: A Global Look at the Numbers." October 23. https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/ds00-social-commerce-aglobal-look-at-the-numbers/.
20. Fiorina, Morris P., and Samuel J. Abrams. 2008. "Political Polarization in the American Public." Annual Review of Political Science 11: 563-88.
21. Flaxman, Seth, Sharad Goel, and Justin M. Rao. 2016. "Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Online News Consumption." Public Opinion Quarterly 80(1): 298-320.
22. Flynn, D. J., Brendan Nyhan, and Jason Reifler. 2017. "The Nature and Origins of Misperceptions: Understanding False and Unsupported Beliefs about Politics." Advances in Political Psychology 38(S1): 127-50.
23. Friggeri, Adrien, Lada Adamic, Dean Eckles, and Justin Cheng. 2014. "Rumor Cascades." Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.
24. Gentzkow, Matthew, and Jesse M. Shapiro. 2006. "Media Bias and Reputation." Journal of Political Economy 114(2): 280-316.
25. Gentzkow, Matthew, and Jesse M. Shapiro. 2011. "Ideological Segregation Online and Offline." Quarterly Journal of Economics 126(4): 1799-1839.
26. Gentzkow, Matthew, Jesse M. Shapiro, and Daniel F. Stone. 2016. "Media Bias in the Marketplace: Theory." Chap. 14 in Handbook of Media Economics, vol. 1B, edited by Simon Anderson, Joel Waldofgel, and David Stromberg.
27. Gerber, Alan S., James G. Gimpel, Donald P. Green, and Daron R. Shaw. 2011. "How Large and Long-lasting are the Persuasive Effects of Televised Campaign Ads? Results from a Randomized Field Experiment." American Political Science Review 105(1): 135-150.
28. Gerber, Alan S., and Donald P. Green. 2000. "The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment." American Political Science Review 94(3): 653-63.
29. Gerber, Alan S., and Gregory A. Huber. 2009. "Partisanship and Economic Behavior: Do Partisan Differences in Economic Forecasts Predict Real Economic Behavior?" American Political Science Review 103(3): 407-26.
30. Gottfried, Jeffrey, and Elisa Shearer. 2016. "News Use across Social Media Platforms 2016." Pew Research Center, May 26. http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-acrosssocial-media-platforms-2016.
31. Guess, Andrew M. 2015. "Measure for Measure: An Experimental Test of Online Political Media Exposure." Political Analysis 23(1): 59-75.
32. Huber, Gregory A., and Kevin Arceneaux. 2007. "Identifying the Persuasive Effects of Presidential Advertising." American Journal of Political Science 51(4): 957-77.
33. Kaplan, Richard L. 2002. Politics and the American Press: The Rise of Objectivity, 1865-1920. Cambridge University Press.
34. Keeley, Brian L. 1999. "Of Conspiracy Theories." Journal of Philosophy 96(3): 109-26.
35. Lang, Kurt, and Gladys Engel Lang. 2002. Television and Politics. Transaction Publishers.
36. Lelkes, Yphtach. 2016. "Mass Polarization: Manifestations and Measurements." Public Opinion Quarterly 80(S1): 392-410.
37. Lewandowsky, Stephan, Gilles E. Gignac, and Klaus Oberauer. 2013. "The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science." PloS One 8(10): e75637.
38. Malka, Ariel, Jon A. Krosnick, and Gary Langer. 2009. "The Association of Knowledge with Concern about Global Warming: Trusted Information Sources Shape Public Thinking." Risk Analysis 29(5): 633-47.
39. Martin, Gregory J., and Ali Yurukoglu. 2014. "Bias in Cable News: Persuasion and Polarization." NBER Working Paper 20798.
40. McClosky, Herbert, and Dennis Chong. 1985. "Similarities and Differences between Left-Wing and Right-Wing Radicals." British Journal of Political Science 15(3): 329-63.
41. Mosseri Adam. 2016. "News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News." Newsroom, Facebook, December 15. http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/12/news-feed-fyi-addressinghoaxes-and-fake-news/.
42. Mullainathan, Sendhil, and Andrei Shleifer. 2005. "The Market for News." American Economic Review 95(4): 1031-53.
43. Napoli, Philip M. 2014. "Measuring Media Impact: An Overview of the Field." Norman Lear Center Media Impact Project. https://learcenter.org/pdf/measuringmedia.pdf.
44. Novak, Jessica. No date. "Quantifying Virality: The Visits to Share Ratio." http://intelligence.r29.com/post/105605860880/quantifying-virality-thevisits-to-shares-ratio.
45. Nyhan, Brendan, Jason Reifler, Sean Richey, and Gary L. Freed. 2014. "Effective Messages in Vaccine Promotion: A Randomized Trial." Pediatrics 133(4): 835-42.
46. Nyhan, Brendan, Jason Reifler, and Peter A. Ubel. 2013. "The Hazards of Correcting Myths about Health Care Reform." Medical Care 51(2): 127-32.
47. Oliver, J. Eric, and Thomas J. Wood. 2014. "Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion." American Journal of Political Science 58(4): 952-66.
48. Pariser, Eli. 2011. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. Penguin UK.
49. Parkinson, Hannah Jane. 2016. "Click and Elect: How Fake News Helped Donald Trump Win a Real Election." Guardian, November 14. PolitiFact. No date. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/elections/2016/president-unitedstates/.
50. Price, Vincent, and John Zaller. 1993. "Who Gets the News? Alternative Measures of News Reception and Their Implications for Research." Public Opinion Quarterly 57(2): 133-64.
51. Prior, Markus. 2009. "The Immensely Inflated News Audience: Assessing Bias in Self-Reported News Exposure." Public Opinion Quarterly 73(1): 130-43.
52. Prior, Markus. 2013. "Media and Political Polarization." Annual Review of Political Science 16: 101-27.
53. Prior, Markus, Gaurav Sood, and Kabir Khanna. 2015. "You Cannot Be Serious: The Impact of Accuracy Incentives on Partisan Bias in Reports of Economic Perceptions." Quarterly Journal of Political Science 10(4): 489-518.
54. Read, Max. 2016. "Donald Trump Won because of Facebook." New York Magazine, November 9.
55. Silverman, Craig. 2016. "This Analysis Shows how Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News on Facebook." Buzz Feed News, November 16.
56. Silverman, Craig and Jeremy Singer-Vine. 2016. "Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says." Buzz Feed News, December 6.
57. Smith, Adam. 1776. The Wealth of Nations. London: W. Strahan.
58. Spenkuch, Jörg L., and David Toniatti. 2016. "Political Advertising and Election Outcomes." CESifo Working Paper Series 5780.
59. Subramanian, Samanth. 2017. "Inside the Macedonian Fake-News Complex, Wired, February 15.
60. Sunstein, Cass R. 2001a. Echo Chambers: Bush v. Gore, Impeachment, and Beyond. Princeton University Press.
61. Sunstein, Cass R. 2001b. Republic.com. Princeton University Press.
62. Sunstein, Cass R. 2007. Republic.com 2.0. Princeton University Press.
63. Swift, Art. 2016. "Americans' Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low." Gallup, September 14. http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americanstrust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx.
64. Sydell, Laura. 2016. "We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs. Here's What We Learned." National Public Radio, November 23. http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operationin-the-suburbs.
65. Taber, Charles S., and Milton Lodge. 2006. "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs." American Journal of Political Science 50(3): 755-69.
66. Townsend, Tess. 2016. "Meet the Romanian Trump Fan behind a Major Fake News Site." Inc. http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/ending-fedtrump-facebook.html.
67. Uscinski, Joseph E., Casey Klofstad, and Matthew D. Atkinson. 2016. "What Drives Conspiratorial Beliefs? The Role of Informational Cues and Predispositions." Political Research Quarterly 69(1): 57-71.
68. Wingfield, Nick, Mike Isaac, and Katie Benner. 2016." Google and Facebook Take Aim at Fake News Sites." New York Times, November 14.
69. Yeager, David S., Jon A. Krosnick, Lin Chiat Chang, Harold S. Javitz, Matthew S. Levendusky, Alberto Simpser, and Rui Wang. 2011. "Comparing the Accuracy of RDD Telephone Surveys and Internet Surveys Conducted with Probability and Non-Probability Samples." Public Opinion Quarterly 75(4): 709-47.
70. Zhao, Junzhou, Pinghui Wang, Jing Tao, Xiaobo Ma, and Xiaohong Guan. 2013. "A Peep on the Interplays between Online Video Websites and Online Social Networks." ariXiv:1305.4018.
71. Zimdars, Melissa. 2016. "False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and Satirical 'News' Sources." http://d279m997dpfwgl.cloudfront.net/wp/2016/11/Resource-False-Misleading-Clickbaity-and-Satirical-%E2%80%9CNews%E2%80%9DSources-1.pdf.