Abstract
Too little is known about basic patterns in the consumption and spread of online misinformation. This project will explore this topic by focusing on a particular recent incarnation of online misinformation, so-called fake news. How often does it appear in the average person’s Facebook News Feed? How did it arrive there? How common an activity is sharing fake news, and what does its distribution look like? To answer these and related questions, we propose to analyze the unprecedented new dataset of shared URLs to be made available by Facebook and Social Science One. By querying the data for matches with lists of specific web domains and Facebook pages designated as “fake news” purveyors or persistent sources of misinformation, we will assemble as complete a picture as possible of the prevalence, dynamics, and spread of both misinformation and disinformation on Facebook.
Principal Investigator

Andrew Guess
Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Princeton University
Participants

Jonathan Nagler
Professor of Politics, New York University

Joshua Tucker
Professor of Politics, New York University