Partisan Differences in the Sharing of Low-Quality News Sources by U.S Political Elites

Abstract

ABSTRACT How often do political elites in the U.S. share low-quality news sources? Are there differences between the parties? While past work has investigated individuals sharing low-quality news sources, there are few large-scale analyses of the quality of information shared by political elites. As individuals rely on elite cues to inform their decision-making, officials sharing low-quality sites may increase polarization while providing legitimacy to low-quality outlets. We fill this gap by collecting more than 300,000 links shared on Facebook by U.S. members of Congress and measuring how often each party shares information from known low-quality news sources. We find that members of Congress share more links to low-quality sites than the public, that Republican members share considerably more than Democrats, and that this gap has increased over time. Finally, we investigate the potential mechanisms underlying this partisan gap and find that only Republicans receive increased engagement when sharing low- quality sites, suggesting asymmetric incentives to share low-quality news sources.