Social media's contribution to political misperceptions in U.S. Presidential elections.

I-Ching Lee,R. Kelly Garrett

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0213500

Abstract

There is considerable concern about the role that social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, play in promoting misperceptions during political campaigns. These technologies are widely used, and inaccurate information flowing across them has a high profile. This research uses three-wave panel surveys conducted with representative samples of Americans during both the 2012 and 2016 U.S. Presidential elections to assess whether use of social media for political information promoted endorsement of falsehoods about major party candidates or important campaign issues. Fixed effects regression helps ensure that observed effects are not due to individual differences. Results indicate that social media use had a small but significant influence on misperceptions about President Obama in the 2012 election, and that this effect was most pronounced among strong partisans. Social media had no effect on belief accuracy about the Republican candidate in that election. The 2016 survey focused on campaign issues. There is no evidence that social media use influenced belief accuracy about these topics in aggregate, but Facebook users were unique. Social media use by this group reduced issue misperceptions relative to those who only used other social media. These results demonstrate that social media can alter citizens’ willingness to endorse falsehoods during an election, but that the effects are often small.

Highlights

On November 19, 2016, the New York Times’ editorial board published a scathing critique of Facebook’s failure to stop the spread of falsehoods in the lead up to the 2016 U.S Presidential Election [1]
Implicit in this claim is an assertion that the effects of social media on citizens’ belief accuracy are large, in contrast to the more limited effects associated with older media systems [2]
Linear fixed effects regression using the panel data provide a rigorous test of these relationships. These models estimate the effect of social media use on belief accuracy, controlling for use of other sources of political news and the passage of time as well as for any time-invariant individual differences

Summary

Introduction

On November 19, 2016, the New York Times’ editorial board published a scathing critique of Facebook’s failure to stop the spread of falsehoods in the lead up to the 2016 U.S Presidential Election [1]. The opinion piece is emblematic of concerns about the threat that social media pose to democracy by corrupting citizens’ perceptions of political reality. Implicit in this claim is an assertion that the effects of social media on citizens’ belief accuracy are large, in contrast to the more limited effects associated with older media systems [2]. In 2012, about two in five Americans reported using social media for political purposes, and about one in three said they had encountered messages on social media promoting one of the candidates in the month leading up to the election [3, 4]. Four years later more Americans named Facebook as the site they most often used for political information in the month leading up to Election Day 2016 than named any other site, including those of high-profile news organizations such as Fox

Results

Discussion

Conclusion