Geographic and temporal trends in fake news consumption during the 2016 US presidential election

Adam Fourney, Miklos Z. Racz, Gireeja Ranade, Markus Mobius, Eric Horvitz

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

48 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present an analysis of traffic to websites known for publishing fake news in the months preceding the 2016 US presidential election. The study is based on the combined instrumentation data from two popular desktop web browsers: Internet Explorer 11 and Edge. We find that social media was the primary outlet for the circulation of fake news stories and that aggregate voting patterns were strongly correlated with the average daily fraction of users visiting websites serving fake news. This correlation was observed both at the state level and at the county level, and remained stable throughout the main election season. We propose a simple model based on homophily in social networks to explain the linear association. Finally, we highlight examples of different types of fake news stories: while certain stories continue to circulate in the population, others are short-lived and die out in a few days.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCIKM 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages2071-2074
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781450349185
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 6 2017
Event26th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, CIKM 2017 - Singapore, Singapore
Duration: Nov 6 2017Nov 10 2017

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Proceedings
VolumePart F131841

Other

Other26th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, CIKM 2017
Country/TerritorySingapore
CitySingapore
Period11/6/1711/10/17

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Decision Sciences
  • General Business, Management and Accounting

Keywords

  • Browsing data
  • Elections
  • Fake news
  • Social media

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