Supersharers of fake news on Twitter.

Item request has been placed! ×
Item request cannot be made. ×
loading   Processing Request
Read More Add to Saved list
  • Additional Information
    • Source:
      Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 0404511 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1095-9203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00368075 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Science Subsets: MEDLINE
    • Publication Information:
      Publication: : Washington, DC : American Association for the Advancement of Science
      Original Publication: New York, N.Y. : [s.n.] 1880-
    • Subject Terms:
      Social Media* ; Politics* ; Deception*; Humans ; United States ; Female ; Male ; Adult ; Aged ; Middle Aged
    • Abstract:
      Governments may have the capacity to flood social media with fake news, but little is known about the use of flooding by ordinary voters. In this work, we identify 2107 registered US voters who account for 80% of the fake news shared on Twitter during the 2020 US presidential election by an entire panel of 664,391 voters. We found that supersharers were important members of the network, reaching a sizable 5.2% of registered voters on the platform. Supersharers had a significant overrepresentation of women, older adults, and registered Republicans. Supersharers' massive volume did not seem automated but was rather generated through manual and persistent retweeting. These findings highlight a vulnerability of social media for democracy, where a small group of people distort the political reality for many.
    • Publication Date:
      Date Created: 20240530 Date Completed: 20240530 Latest Revision: 20240612
    • Publication Date:
      20240613
    • Accession Number:
      10.1126/science.adl4435
    • Accession Number:
      38815033