Exposure to untrustworthy websites in the 2016 US election
Open accessAbstract
Although commentators frequently warn about echo chambers, little is known about the volume or slant of political misinformation that people consume online, the effects of social media and fact checking on exposure, or the effects of political misinformation on behaviour. Here, we evaluate these questions for websites that publish factually dubious content, which is often described as fake news. Survey and web-traffic data from the 2016 US presidential campaign show that supporters of Donald Trump were most likely to visit these websites, which often spread through Facebook. However, these websites made up a small share of people's information diets on average and were largely consumed by a subset of Americans with strong preferences for pro-attitudinal information. These results suggest that the widespread speculation about the prevalence of exposure to untrustworthy websites has been overstated.
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15% of referrals to fake news sites come from Facebook.
“15% of referrals to fake news sites are coming from Facebook (Guess et al. 2020)”
From Pink slime journalism on Facebook: advertisement trends and political influence (2019–2024) (2026) · cites this paper as Guess et al. 2020
In Results, ‘Gateways to untrustworthy websites,’ Facebook appeared among the three sites visited in the preceding 30 seconds for 15.1% of observed articles from untrustworthy news websites. The paper explicitly says it could not directly observe referring sites, so this does not establish that 15% of referrals came from Facebook. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredNearly 40% of Americans viewed content from untrustworthy websites during the 2016 US election, but these articles only represented about 6% of all news articles consumed.
“Nearly 40% of Americans viewed content from untrustworthy websites during the 2016 US election, but these articles only represented about 6% of all news articles consumed (16)”
From Misinformation in and about science (2021) · cites this paper as [16]
People typically consume much more information from mainstream sources than from untrustworthy ones.
“they typically consume much more information from mainstream sources than from untrustworthy ones (53).”
From A digital media literacy intervention increases discernment between mainstream and false news in the United States and India (2020) · cites this paper as [53]
Traditional digital media forensics often rely on image metadata that are not available for many of today's most concerning deepfakes, which typically appear first on social media platforms stripped of such metadata.
“traditional digital media forensics, which often rely on image metadata (14) that are not available for many of today’s most concerning deepfakes, which typically appear first on social media platforms stripped of such metadata (15, 16).”
From Deepfake detection by human crowds, machines, and machine-informed crowds (2022) · cites this paper as [15]
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- Authors
- Guess, A. M., Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- Dartmouth College (US)
- University of Exeter (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Nyhan, Brendan
- Venue
- Nature Human Behaviour
- Published
- 2020-03-02
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 472-480
- ISSN
- 2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7239673
- OpenAlex
- W3010420310
- Cited by
- 587
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 80 · 2025: 88 · 2024: 92 · 2023: 92 · 2022: 98 · 2021: 85 · 2020: 50 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 109.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Human Behaviour (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- ePrints Soton (University of Southampton) (acceptedVersion)
- Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter) (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Keywords
- political misinformation, fake news, 2016 US presidential election, Facebook, echo chambers, information diet, fact-checking, social media
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Communication, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Politics, United States, Internet, Trust, Social Media
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