This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook
A Facebook spokesman told BuzzFeed News that the top stories don't reflect overall engagement on the platform. "There is a long tail of stories on Facebook " the spokesman said. "It may seem like the top stories get a lot of traction  but they represent a tiny fraction of the total." He also said that native video  live content  and image posts from major news outlets saw significant engagement on Facebook. Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the analysis  all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton. Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump  which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against  Trump 's interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama  a false report that Ireland was accepting American "refugees" fleeing Trump  and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by  Trump .
This week BuzzFeed News reported that a group of Facebook employees have formed a task force to tackle the issue  with one saying that "fake news ran wild on our platform during the entire campaign season." The Wall Street Journal also reported that Google would begin barring fake news websites from its AdSense advertising program. Facebook soon followed suit. These developments follow a study by BuzzFeed News that revealed hyperpartisan Facebook pages and their websites were publishing false or misleading content at an alarming rate â and generating significant Facebook engagement in the process. The same was true for the more than 100 US politics websites BuzzFeed News found being run out of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. This new analysis of election content found two false election stories from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook engagement int he final three months. Conservative State published a story that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying  âI would like to see  people like Donald Trump  run for office;  they âre honest and canât be bought.â The story generated over 481 000 engagements on Facebook. A second false story from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be indicted. It received 149 000 engagements on Facebook. All the false news stories identified in BuzzFeed News' analysis came from either fake news websites that only publish hoaxes or from hyperpartisan websites that present themselves as publishing real news. The research turned up only one viral false election story from a hyperpartisan left-wing site. The story from Winning Democrats claimed Ireland was accepting anti-Trump "refugees" from the US. It received over 810 000 Facebook engagements  and was debunked by an Irish publication. (There was also one post from an LGBTQ site that used a false quote from  Trump  in its headline.) The other false viral election stories from hyperpartisan sites came from right-wing publishers  according to the analysis.
One example is the remarkably successful  utterly untrustworthy site Ending the Fed. It was responsible for four of the top 10 false election stories identified in the analysis: Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump  Hilary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS  Hillary Clinton being disqualified from holding federal office  and the FBI director receiving millions from the Clinton Foundation. These four stories racked up a total of roughly 2 953 000 Facebook engagements in the three months leading up to Election Day.
That site was only registered in April of this year. Its publisher disputes the idea that its content is aimed at misleading readers. "The BS Journal is a satire news publication and makes absolutely no secret of that or any attempt to purposely mislead our readers " he told BuzzFeed News. Large news sites also generated strong Facebook engagement for links to their election stories. But to truly find the biggest election hits from these 19 major sites  it's necessary to go back to early 2016. The three biggest election hits for these outlets came back in February  led by a contributor post on the Huffington Post's blog about Donald Trump that received 2 200 000 engagements on Facebook. The top-performing election news story on Facebook for the 19 outlets analyzed was also published that month by CBS News. It generated an impressive 1.7 million shares  engagements  and comments on Facebook. Overall  a significant number of the top-performing posts on Facebook from major outlets were opinion pieces  rather than news stories. The biggest mainstream hit in the three months prior to the election came from the Washington Post and had 876 000 engagements. Yet somehow Ending the Fed â a site launched just months earlier with no history on Facebook and likely a very small group of people running it â managed to get more engagement for a false story during that same period. âPeople know there are concerned employees who are seeing something here which they consider a big problem â a Facebook manager told BuzzFeed News this week. âAnd it doesnât feel like the people making decisions are taking the concerns seriously.â
BuzzFeed News used the content analysis tool BuzzSumo  which enables users to search for content by keyword  URL  time range  and social share counts. BuzzFeed News searched in BuzzSumo using keywords such as "Hillary Clinton" and "Donald Trump " as well as combinations such as " Trump  and election" or "Clinton and emails" to see the top stories about these topics according to Facebook engagement. We also searched for known viral lies such as "Soros and voting machine." In addition  created lists of the URLs of known fake news websites  of hyperpartisan sites on the right and on the left  and of the more than 100 pro-Trump sites run from Macedonia that were previously identified in BuzzFeed News reporting. We then looked for the top performing content on Facebook across all of these sites to find false stories about the election. We conducted our searches in three-month segments beginning 9 months from election day. This broke down as February to April  May to July  and August to election day. Even with the above approaches  it's entirely possible that we missed other big hits from fake news websites and hyperpartisan blogs. To examine the performance of election content from mainstream sites  we created a list that included the websites of the New York Times  Washington Post  NBC News  USA Today  Politico  CNN  Wall Street Journal  CBS News  ABC News  New York Daily News  New York Post  BuzzFeed  Los Angeles Times  NPR  The Guardian  Vox  Business Insider  Huffington Post  and Fox News. We then searched for their top-performing election content in the same three-month segments as above. It's important to note that Facebook engagement does not necessarily translate into traffic. This analysis was focused on how the best-performing fake news about the election compared with real news from major outlets on Facebook. It's entirely possible â and likely â that the mainstream sites received more traffic to their top-performing Facebook content than the fake news sites did. As as the Facebook spokesman noted  large news sites overall see more engagement on Facebook than fake news sites.
A Facebook spokesman told BuzzFeed News that the top stories don't reflect overall engagement on the platform. "There is a long tail of stories on Facebook " the spokesman said. "It may seem like the top stories get a lot of traction  but they represent a tiny fraction of the total." He also said that native video  live content  and image posts from major news outlets saw significant engagement on Facebook. Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the analysis  all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton. Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump  which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against  Trump 's interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama  a false report that Ireland was accepting American "refugees" fleeing Trump  and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by  Trump .
This week BuzzFeed News reported that a group of Facebook employees have formed a task force to tackle the issue  with one saying that "fake news ran wild on our platform during the entire campaign season." The Wall Street Journal also reported that Google would begin barring fake news websites from its AdSense advertising program. Facebook soon followed suit. These developments follow a study by BuzzFeed News that revealed hyperpartisan Facebook pages and their websites were publishing false or misleading content at an alarming rate â and generating significant Facebook engagement in the process. The same was true for the more than 100 US politics websites BuzzFeed News found being run out of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. This new analysis of election content found two false election stories from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook engagement int he final three months. Conservative State published a story that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying  âI would like to see   [TGT] run for office;   [TGT]  âre honest and canât be bought.â The story generated over 481 000 engagements on Facebook. A second false story from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be indicted. It received 149 000 engagements on Facebook. All the false news stories identified in BuzzFeed News' analysis came from either fake news websites that only publish hoaxes or from hyperpartisan websites that present themselves as publishing real news. The research turned up only one viral false election story from a hyperpartisan left-wing site. The story from Winning Democrats claimed Ireland was accepting anti-Trump "refugees" from the US. It received over 810 000 Facebook engagements  and was debunked by an Irish publication. (There was also one post from an LGBTQ site that used a false quote from  Trump  in its headline.) The other false viral election stories from hyperpartisan sites came from right-wing publishers  according to the analysis.
One example is the remarkably successful  utterly untrustworthy site Ending the Fed. It was responsible for four of the top 10 false election stories identified in the analysis: Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump  Hilary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS  Hillary Clinton being disqualified from holding federal office  and the FBI director receiving millions from the Clinton Foundation. These four stories racked up a total of roughly 2 953 000 Facebook engagements in the three months leading up to Election Day.
That site was only registered in April of this year. Its publisher disputes the idea that its content is aimed at misleading readers. "The BS Journal is a satire news publication and makes absolutely no secret of that or any attempt to purposely mislead our readers " he told BuzzFeed News. Large news sites also generated strong Facebook engagement for links to their election stories. But to truly find the biggest election hits from these 19 major sites  it's necessary to go back to early 2016. The three biggest election hits for these outlets came back in February  led by a contributor post on the Huffington Post's blog about Donald Trump that received 2 200 000 engagements on Facebook. The top-performing election news story on Facebook for the 19 outlets analyzed was also published that month by CBS News. It generated an impressive 1.7 million shares  engagements  and comments on Facebook. Overall  a significant number of the top-performing posts on Facebook from major outlets were opinion pieces  rather than news stories. The biggest mainstream hit in the three months prior to the election came from the Washington Post and had 876 000 engagements. Yet somehow Ending the Fed â a site launched just months earlier with no history on Facebook and likely a very small group of people running it â managed to get more engagement for a false story during that same period. âPeople know there are concerned employees who are seeing something here which they consider a big problem â a Facebook manager told BuzzFeed News this week. âAnd it doesnât feel like the people making decisions are taking the concerns seriously.â
BuzzFeed News used the content analysis tool BuzzSumo  which enables users to search for content by keyword  URL  time range  and social share counts. BuzzFeed News searched in BuzzSumo using keywords such as "Hillary Clinton" and "Donald Trump " as well as combinations such as " Trump  and election" or "Clinton and emails" to see the top stories about these topics according to Facebook engagement. We also searched for known viral lies such as "Soros and voting machine." In addition  created lists of the URLs of known fake news websites  of hyperpartisan sites on the right and on the left  and of the more than 100 pro-Trump sites run from Macedonia that were previously identified in BuzzFeed News reporting. We then looked for the top performing content on Facebook across all of these sites to find false stories about the election. We conducted our searches in three-month segments beginning 9 months from election day. This broke down as February to April  May to July  and August to election day. Even with the above approaches  it's entirely possible that we missed other big hits from fake news websites and hyperpartisan blogs. To examine the performance of election content from mainstream sites  we created a list that included the websites of the New York Times  Washington Post  NBC News  USA Today  Politico  CNN  Wall Street Journal  CBS News  ABC News  New York Daily News  New York Post  BuzzFeed  Los Angeles Times  NPR  The Guardian  Vox  Business Insider  Huffington Post  and Fox News. We then searched for their top-performing election content in the same three-month segments as above. It's important to note that Facebook engagement does not necessarily translate into traffic. This analysis was focused on how the best-performing fake news about the election compared with real news from major outlets on Facebook. It's entirely possible â and likely â that the mainstream sites received more traffic to their top-performing Facebook content than the fake news sites did. As as the Facebook spokesman noted  large news sites overall see more engagement on Facebook than fake news sites.