Pro-Trump Fake News
Although no study has definitively proven that Trump won the election because of Russian meddling, all the studies I reviewed concluded that he was the primary beneficiary of fake news. Allcott and Gentzkow (2017) determined that “fake news was both widely shared and heavily tilted in favor of Donald Trump” (p. 212). They found 115 pro-Trump fake stories that were shared on Facebook 30 million times, compared to 41 pro-Clinton false stories that were shared 7.6 million times. Guess et al. (2018) similarly found that people saw an average of 5.45 articles from fake news websites before the election, nearly all of which were skewed toward Trump. Guess et al. (2019) noted that the Republicans in their sample shared more fake news stories than the Democrats, and the sources were mostly positive for Trump.
While noting that Trump was the primary beneficiary of fake news, researchers are somewhat conflicted about the actual impact on election results. Allcott and Gentzkow (2017) argued that fake news is unlikely to have changed the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Benkler et al. (2018) similarly found no evidence that Russian trolls or fake news helped sway the vote. However, Jamieson (2018) suggested the opposite: She argued that by targeting content to align with Trump’s electoral interests, Russian trolls likely helped to elect him as president. She justified her findings “based on the preponderance of evidence” (p. 14). Regardless, Ashley et al. (2018) wrote that it is difficult to determine with certainty how many people saw fake news and to what extent, if any, it influenced voting decisions.
Surprisingly, one reason fake news primarily benefited Trump had little to do with its authors wanting to see him elected. Instead, these stories served as “clickbait” after the authors noticed that pro-Trump stories, or stories that attacked Clinton, received the most clicks. McIntyre (2018), Allcott and Gentzkow (2017), and Ashley et al. (2018) all concurred that one of the primary motivations for the creation of fake news was financial gain for the creators. Fictitious stories about Trump generated more engagement online, resulting in increased revenue through Google AdSense and Facebook’s advertising platform. Higgins, McIntire, and Dance (2016) interviewed a student from the country of Georgia who created fake news stories on social media. He said posts about Clinton did not generate much interest, but fake reports that were skewed toward Trump did. A report conducted by the Global Disinformation Index determined that at least $235 million is generated each year from ads that run on extremist or fake news websites (Duffy, 2019).