‘Fake news’ impact on US election overstated claims survey
A new study conducted into the influence of ‘fake news’ on the US election campaign has concluded that erroneous reports played no significant role in the elevation of Donald Trump as president, as people soon forgot the content of such stories.
Stanford University professor Matthew Gentzkow and his counterpart at NYU Hunt Allcot reached their conclusion after quizzing 1,208 US adults in the aftermath of the election on whether they had read specific examples of intentionally fabricated news, actual news and ‘placebo‘ tales invented by the authors – before asking whether they actually believed what they were reading.
The exercise followed this up by asking whether anyone remembered encountering any fake news aimed specifically at Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Finally, the researchers looked at how their results compared to traditional mediums such as television.
In their report, the authors observed that just 15% of participants reported seeing the fake news stories while 8% admitted seeing and believing such content – but these numbers were in line with those reported for the placebo red herrings, prompting the authors to state: “People were no more likely to recall seeing actual fake headlines than they were to falsely recall placebo headlines.
“Social media were not the most important source of election news, and even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans.“
Overall less than 14% of those quizzed cited soical media as their primary source of election news, with 15% relying on websites. By far the majority (57%) however emphasised TV news with another 14% split between print and radio.
Looking at this data in its entirety the authors calculate that the average American would have remembered 0.92 pro-Trump fake stories and just 0.23 pro-Clinton fabrications.