IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v31y2017i2p211-36.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

Author

Listed:
  • Hunt Allcott
  • Matthew Gentzkow

Abstract

Following the 2016 US presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories ("fake news"), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: 1) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their "most important" source; 2) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; 3) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and 4) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.

Suggested Citation

  • Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 211-236, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:31:y:2017:i:2:p:211-36
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.31.2.211
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=ejSlDQa2FaEV6W5iUlP7csuzGZTVn_R1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=OqLfxLHqt5RtEiUNfFokPQxjK1-z4aJy
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=q4pYTx4qpHVlMYhhDwRpfAooPGDPBlxT
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ariel Malka & Jon A. Krosnick & Gary Langer, 2009. "The Association of Knowledge with Concern About Global Warming: Trusted Information Sources Shape Public Thinking," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(5), pages 633-647, May.
    2. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro & Daniel F. Stone, 2014. "Media Bias in the Marketplace: Theory," NBER Working Papers 19880, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Gerber, Alan S. & Gimpel, James G. & Green, Donald P. & Shaw, Daron R., 2011. "How Large and Long-lasting Are the Persuasive Effects of Televised Campaign Ads? Results from a Randomized Field Experiment," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(1), pages 135-150, February.
    4. Berinsky, Adam J., 2017. "Rumors and Health Care Reform: Experiments in Political Misinformation," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(2), pages 241-262, April.
    5. Gerber, Alan S. & Huber, Gregory A., 2009. "Partisanship and Economic Behavior: Do Partisan Differences in Economic Forecasts Predict Real Economic Behavior?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(3), pages 407-426, August.
    6. Gregory A. Huber & Kevin Arceneaux, 2007. "Identifying the Persuasive Effects of Presidential Advertising," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(4), pages 957-977, October.
    7. Prior, Markus & Sood, Gaurav & Khanna, Kabir, 2015. "You Cannot be Serious: The Impact of Accuracy Incentives on Partisan Bias in Reports of Economic Perceptions," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 10(4), pages 489-518, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," NBER Working Papers 23089, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Laurent Bouton & Julia Cagé & Edgard Dewitte & Vincent Pons, 2021. "Small Campaign Donors," Working Papers hal-03878175, HAL.
    3. Baum, Charles L. & Owens, Mark F., 2023. "Does personal door-to-door campaigning influence voters? Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    4. Liberini, Federica & Redoano, Michela & Russo, Antonio & Cuevas, Angel & Cuevas, Ruben, 2018. "Politics in the Facebook Era Evidence from the 2016 US Presidential Elections," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 389, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    5. Masha Krupenkin & David Rothschild & Shawndra Hill & Elad Yom-Tov, 2019. "President Trump Stress Disorder: Partisanship, Ethnicity, and Expressive Reporting of Mental Distress After the 2016 Election," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, March.
    6. Thomas Fujiwara & Karsten Müller & Carlo Schwarz, 2021. "The Effect of Social Media on Elections: Evidence from the United States," NBER Working Papers 28849, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Di Tella, Rafael & Galiani, Sebastian & Schargrodsky, Ernesto, 2021. "Persuasive propaganda during the 2015 Argentine Ballotage," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 885-900.
    8. Adam L. Aiken & Jesse A. Ellis & Minjeong Kang, 2020. "Do Politicians “Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is?” Ideology and Portfolio Choice," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 376-396, January.
    9. Horacio A Larreguy & John Marshall & James M SnyderJr, 2018. "Leveling the playing field: How campaign advertising can help non-dominant parties," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(6), pages 1812-1849.
    10. Xinming Du, 2023. "Symptom or Culprit? Social Media, Air Pollution, and Violence," CESifo Working Paper Series 10296, CESifo.
    11. Ethan Struby & Christina Farhart, 2024. "Inflation Expectations and Political Polarization: Evidence from the Cooperative Election Study," Working Papers 2024-01, Carleton College, Department of Economics.
    12. Erik Peterson & Shanto Iyengar, 2021. "Partisan Gaps in Political Information and Information‐Seeking Behavior: Motivated Reasoning or Cheerleading?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(1), pages 133-147, January.
    13. Brett R. Gordon & Wesley R. Hartmann, 2016. "Advertising competition in presidential elections," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 1-40, March.
    14. Thomas Fujiwara & Karsten Müller & Carlo Schwarz, 2024. "The Effect of Social Media on Elections: Evidence from The United States," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 22(3), pages 1495-1539.
    15. Wilson Law, 2021. "Decomposing political advertising effects on vote choices," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 188(3), pages 525-547, September.
    16. Maarten Meeuwis & Jonathan A. Parker & Antoinette Schoar & Duncan Simester, 2022. "Belief Disagreement and Portfolio Choice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(6), pages 3191-3247, December.
    17. Brett R. Gordon & Wesley R. Hartmann, 2013. "Advertising Effects in Presidential Elections," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(1), pages 19-35, June.
    18. Brett Gordon & Mitchell Lovett & Ron Shachar & Kevin Arceneaux & Sridhar Moorthy & Michael Peress & Akshay Rao & Subrata Sen & David Soberman & Oleg Urminsky, 2012. "Marketing and politics: Models, behavior, and policy implications," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 391-403, June.
    19. Mitchell J. Lovett, 2019. "Empirical Research on Political Marketing: a Selected Review," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 6(3), pages 49-56, December.
    20. Juan Pablo Atal & José Ignacio Cuesta & Felipe González & Cristóbal Otero, 2024. "The Economics of the Public Option: Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(3), pages 615-644, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:31:y:2017:i:2:p:211-36. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.