Facebook plays a key role in the spread of disinformation. A study now examined the impact of fact checks.
Facebook as a fake news headquarters? – The most important thing at the beginning:
A study used browser history and voting behavior to examine how users access questionable content, find out about corrections via fact checks and thus form their opinions.
Study with 2,525 volunteer participants
The journal Nature Human Behavior published a study in which political scientists Brendan Nyhan, Jason Reifler and Andrew Guess found that fact checks hardly counteract the spread of fake news. This is probably because the majority of users are not interested in it at all.
Only a quarter of all users would even access content from fact checkers. And only 2.7 percent read the information published here.
This shows that fact checks do not have a major influence on the formation of general opinions. Content from fact checkers probably only reaches those who already deal with media critically.
Facebook's role in fake news
The authors of the study see Facebook as a key factor in disinformation. This could be explained by the fact that for 15 percent of the study participants, Facebook was one of the last three websites before visiting questionable content on the Internet.
Classic news sites were only found in six percent of cases in the browser history before visiting dubious information. The study authors came to the conclusion that fake news consumers must have accessed the wrong content directly via Facebook.
In recent months, Facebook has increasingly dedicated itself to the fight against fake news and has also hired its own fact-checkers. Nevertheless, it is still very easy to spread fake news.
However, the study cannot be used to create a profile of the typical fake news consumer. Particularly active readers of serious news are also particularly active when reading questionable news sources.
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Users' browser history
In order to carry out the study, 2,525 users voluntarily provided their browser history and information about voting behavior. A possible falsification is possible because only the history of desktop devices was used. However, participants' mobile Internet use was not taken into account.
Conclusion of the study
The study authors conclude the study with the conclusion that although fact checks generate little interest, the fake news issue is manageable when it comes to analyzes of the environment surrounding the 2016 US presidential election. According to this, only around six percent of US citizens obtained information from dubious websites.
In the conservative environment of US voters, fake news information was consumed significantly more. 62 percent of all page views from questionable providers came from 20 percent of US citizens who prefer conservative content.
Also read: “ Scammers impersonate Facebook ”
Source: t3n.de
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

