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Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem

“Fake news,” broadly defined as false or misleading information masquerading as legitimate news, is frequently asserted to be pervasive online with serious consequences for democracy. Using a unique multimode dataset that comprises a nationally representative sample of mobile, desktop, and televisio...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Allen, Jennifer, Howland, Baird, Mobius, Markus, Rothschild, David, Watts, Duncan J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7124954/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32284969
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aay3539
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author Allen, Jennifer
Howland, Baird
Mobius, Markus
Rothschild, David
Watts, Duncan J.
author_facet Allen, Jennifer
Howland, Baird
Mobius, Markus
Rothschild, David
Watts, Duncan J.
author_sort Allen, Jennifer
collection PubMed
description “Fake news,” broadly defined as false or misleading information masquerading as legitimate news, is frequently asserted to be pervasive online with serious consequences for democracy. Using a unique multimode dataset that comprises a nationally representative sample of mobile, desktop, and television consumption, we refute this conventional wisdom on three levels. First, news consumption of any sort is heavily outweighed by other forms of media consumption, comprising at most 14.2% of Americans’ daily media diets. Second, to the extent that Americans do consume news, it is overwhelmingly from television, which accounts for roughly five times as much as news consumption as online. Third, fake news comprises only 0.15% of Americans’ daily media diet. Our results suggest that the origins of public misinformedness and polarization are more likely to lie in the content of ordinary news or the avoidance of news altogether as they are in overt fakery.
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spelling pubmed-71249542020-04-13 Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem Allen, Jennifer Howland, Baird Mobius, Markus Rothschild, David Watts, Duncan J. Sci Adv Research Articles “Fake news,” broadly defined as false or misleading information masquerading as legitimate news, is frequently asserted to be pervasive online with serious consequences for democracy. Using a unique multimode dataset that comprises a nationally representative sample of mobile, desktop, and television consumption, we refute this conventional wisdom on three levels. First, news consumption of any sort is heavily outweighed by other forms of media consumption, comprising at most 14.2% of Americans’ daily media diets. Second, to the extent that Americans do consume news, it is overwhelmingly from television, which accounts for roughly five times as much as news consumption as online. Third, fake news comprises only 0.15% of Americans’ daily media diet. Our results suggest that the origins of public misinformedness and polarization are more likely to lie in the content of ordinary news or the avoidance of news altogether as they are in overt fakery. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2020-04-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7124954/ /pubmed/32284969 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aay3539 Text en Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Allen, Jennifer
Howland, Baird
Mobius, Markus
Rothschild, David
Watts, Duncan J.
Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem
title Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem
title_full Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem
title_fullStr Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem
title_full_unstemmed Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem
title_short Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem
title_sort evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7124954/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32284969
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aay3539
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