According to a study conducted by Megan A. Brown and Maggie Macdonald of the CSMAP at NYU, Republican candidates are the most likely to share unreliable news sources with their followers. This study collected data from the Facebook pages of Congress candidates from 2020 and 2022 and considered the URL links shared on the platform. "From January to July of 2022, on average each day, 36 percent of news that Republican candidates shared came from unreliable sites, while that was true for only 2 percent of news shared by Democratic Candidates each day." (Macdonald & Brown, 2022)
This study points out some concerning statistics about the Republican party, but I want to highlight the outliner in these numbers, Sarah Palin. As of 2022, Palin was running for Alaska's House seat as a Republican candidate. Out of 853 links shared, 849 were deemed unreliable, equaling up to 99% of sources being unreliable. Palin was so much of an outlier that without her, the Republicans would have dropped from 36% unreliable to 12%. While this is a significant drop, 12% would still be a 50% increase from 2020, which averaged approximately 8% of unreliable sources shared. (Macdonald & Brown, 2022)
I chose to use this picture of Sarah Palin and former President Donald Trump because there's a lot of irony here. Like Palin, Trump is pretty notorious for spreading unreliable sources, or "fake news" as he likes to call it. "Of Trump's 10 most-popular tweets, four contained false claims related to the 2020 election results. Of his 100 most popular posts, 36 contained election-related falsehoods." (Rattner, 2021) Considering Trump tweeted over 16,000 times on his Twitter account before being banned, this study suggests that a significant percentage of false posts were shared during his time on the platform.
Considering everything that's been said, I feel it's reasonable to say that Trump may have negatively impacted the Republican party by normalizing the spread of unreliable sources.
Sources:
Macdonald, M., Brown, M.A. (2022). Republicans are increasingly sharing misinformation, research finds. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/29/republicans-democrats-misinformation-falsehoods/
Macdonald, M., Brown, M.A. (2022). Methos Supplement for "More and more, Republicans are sharing misinformation, research finds.". NYU's Center of Social Media and Politics. https://csmapnyu.org/assets/publications/2022_08_26_Methods_Supplement__TMC_Candidate_Fake_News.pdf
Rattner, N. (2021). Trump's election lies were among his most popular tweets. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/trump-tweets-legacy-of-lies-misinformation-distrust.html
Comments
Post a Comment