Fake News on Twitter
The popular microblogging site, Twitter, is another social media platform that is awash with disinformation and propaganda campaigns (Hindman, 2018). By its nature, Twitter is ideally suited to be a user’s customized news aggregator. Research sponsored by the nonprofit Knight Foundation examined 10 million tweets from 700,000 Twitter accounts that linked to 600 known fake news sites. They contrasted tweets from the month before the election to those from mid-March to mid-April 2017. Then they rechecked their data following a clampdown by Twitter on fake news accounts later that summer. Despite Twitter’s moves, the study revealed that more than 80% of accounts that foment disinformation in 2016 were still active as of October 2018 (Hindman, 2018). The study also found that many of the accounts spreading misinformation were “bots,” a type of software that can be programmed to perform automated tasks such as tweeting, retweeting, liking, or following, among other actions. Hindman (2018) argued that Twitter should force accounts tweeting about politics to pass a “captcha” test to prove human beings operate them. He also concluded his report by recommending that Twitter should target the largest fake news and conspiracy sites and reduce their influence. Doing so, the author argued, could dramatically diminish the proliferation of fake news on Twitter.
A separate study by researchers at Northeastern University, SUNY Buffalo, and Harvard University examined 16,442 Twitter accounts that were active between August and December 2016 (Grinberg et al., 2019). By examining the content of the tweets these accounts followed, researchers studied the tweets that each account was potentially exposed, which they called “exposures.” What they found was that 0.1% of the users engaged with 80% of the total volume of fake news. The study called these users “supersharers” (Grinberg et al., 2019). Ideologically, 21% of the accounts were of users on the extreme right, and 11% were on the right, while fewer than 5% of users were on the left or in the center of the political spectrum. Nevertheless, the authors found that “most political news exposure still came from mainstream media outlets” (Grinberg et al., 2019, p. 374). They concluded that fake news did not go more viral than real news.
No prior U.S. president has engaged with Twitter quite like Donald Trump. In an in-depth investigative report, The New York Times examined Trump’s presidency alongside more than 11,000 of his tweets. The authors noted, “As much as anything, Twitter is the broadcast network for Mr. Trump’s parallel political reality — the ‘alternative facts’ he has used to spread conspiracy theories, fake information and extremist content, including material that energizes some of his base” (Shear, Haberman, Confessore, Yourish, Buchanan, & Collins, 2019, para. 16). The Times’ investigation found that President Trump has retweeted at least 145 unverified accounts pushing conspiracy theories and fake news. He also regularly retweets his son, Donald Jr., who also promotes fringe conspiracy theories.