STANFORD, Calif. — As social media sites like Facebook and Snapchat move to eliminate “fake news” reports from their sites, researchers from Stanford and New York Universities say Americans can be sure of one thing: the phenomenon did not affect the results of the 2016 presidential election.
The study investigates the influence that fake news may have had on President Trump’s victory.
NYU economics professor Hunt Allcott and Stanford economics professor Matthew Gentzkow led the research. The pair ran a series of tests to determine which fake news articles were circulated, how much of it was circulated, and the amount of voters that believed the stories to be true.
Once they gathered an assortment of fake news stories, Gentzkow and Allcott used fact-checking resources in order to verify that these stories were fake. They then conducted a post-election survey that consisted of 1,200 voters.
Participants were asked what their primary or “most important” source of 2016 election news was. Next, they were presented with a list of true and false news stories, and asked two questions concerning each individual story. The first was whether or not the participant remembered seeing the story. The second question asked whether or not they believed the story.
Although fake news stories in Trump’s favor were shared more times (30 million compared to 8 million for Hillary Clinton), the authors of the report had determined that these stories still did not reach enough voters nationwide to change the election results.
“The average American saw and remembered 0.92 pro-Trump fake news stories and 0.23 pro-Clinton fake news stories, with just over half of those who recalled seeing fake news stories believing them,” the authors write. But, “for fake news to have changed the outcome of the election, a single fake article would need to have had the same persuasive effect as 36 television campaign ads.”
The observers’ work also revealed that a majority of voters were capable of accurately deciding whether or not a news story was true. They concluded that an insignificant number of American voters casted their final decision based on false information.
“In summary, our data suggest that social media were not the most important source of election news, and even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans,” the study concludes.
Well of course it didn’t, we don’t give a rats ass about them, only go to their worthless sites to beat them senseless in the comments section and the ones that have no comments are shredded on blogs that do. They control nothing, America’s patience with snowflakes and the life support system of fake news is over. The country is red, the blue areas had best STFU and or get out of the way as we didn’t behave like mindless single celled organism’s when DUH WON won twice. Did I protest? Why yes I did, I went to work every G D day.
You said it all for me. Thanks
Thanks for your service, Jess.
How about “Hillary has a 92% chance of winning”? Hillary voters (actually non-voters) fell for this fake news story, big time! How can the claim that fake news stories were insignificant be taken seriously? If Hillary wasn’t your gal, rejoice, as most will learn nothing from history. There will be future elections.
HRC actively DECIDED to promote the phony poll leads, her campaign wanted an MSNBC host removed for daring to question why no events were securing her “wall”. She lost, get over it, quit crying wolf.
The fake news came from ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN and MSNBC. Saying Hillary is ahead does 3 things, depresses Trump supporters, lifts the spirits of Hillary supporters and gives the MSM plausible deniability. IMHO.
Fake news was spread like manure all over TV, the Internet and newspapers. Hillary was always in the lead, she was going to trounce Trump, Hillary would be the first woman president, etc. The average American didn’t believe that drivel. We were too smart to be taken in by the lies of CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, MSNBC, NPR and the news papers. They are still publishing fake news and we still don’t believe it. The media just doesn’t get it that they were spanked hard by the average American and we aren’t going to believe anything they say, print or publish!
Same page, Yarn. Thank you. Do we believe MSM fake news changed the election? Not really. Fundamentally, this fake news effect is unknowable because after-the-fact sampling and modeling has serious limitations. However, “Americans not believing” it a very important topic unto itself: How about Hillary’s collapse at the 9/11 ceremonies, or during the debates “all 17 intelligence agree: the Russians did it”, or my favorite “today the FBI is re-opening the investigation into her private e-mail server”? There are many reasons for Hillary’s defeat, some based on truths, but just too many falsehoods for reasonable people to accept in total.
Well and nicely stated. Unfortunately nothing will change.
Nicely done.
HOOAH!
This supports what my common sense told me all along. I don’t know a single person who changed their vote based on the Hillary or Podesta e-mail revelations. The Hillary voters were going to vote for her come hell or high water. The Trump voters were either voting for Trump for his policy stances OR because he was the “Anybody but Hillary” candidate.
I think the argument is the “anybody but hillary” voters were swayed by all the emails and other bull. Otherwise, why did they hate her guts so much (you’re separating these folks from Trump voters). And many were disaffected/apathetic/disgusted by both sides. Probably because they believed the nonsense. And those people went third party or didn’t vote which also denied Hillary many votes.
There was no bull. The F.B.I. director clearly stated that she violated the law, but not to an extent that he believed a prosecutor would pursue. That wasn’t his call, but that’s what happened. Then the Russians hacked her email, exposing the truth behind her campaign. People don’t like her because she’s a liar, a crook, and a two-faced politician. With Trump, they knew EXACTLY what they were getting.
But Trump is a liar, a crook and a hypocrite. So I don’t get your point.
Hillary was not an unknown candidate prior to 2015 when she decided to run. Many of us who were in the ABC camp, “anything but clinton” were looking for alternatives all along. Very few were swayed by emails and recent BS.
Hillary lost big time bc we had enough of her and Obama. She had her chance when her husband ran this country with his pants down!
That was beautiful. ‘What he said’. Long live Milo, Nigel Farage, and all the other Truth-sayers.
RIGHT ON!!!
A fake news story about fake news, how quaint. Zero verifiable data was provided, no link to the study so we can read the data and the sources for ourselves. I hope they didn’t use Snopes to “fact-check” the fake news. Goebbels would be proud.
My sentiments exactly. Snopes is anything but credible.
Exactly–this “study” continues to promote the same exact FAKE news and slant on certain events.
First, the FBI investigation was re-opened, not because of “Russian Hacking” or fake news, but because Anthony Weiner’s laptop with the 30,000 scrubbed Clinton emails was recovered. It’s simple, in any case when new evidence is found, investigators open the files back up and take another look.
Secondly, the entire mainstream media and the university polls were all slanting coverage to try and discourage the middle-America voters with a “don’t waste your time voting, Hillary is winning in a landslide” nationwide propaganda campaign.
Also, this study says that roughly 80% of fake news favored Trump–I’d call BS on this as everything from Mother Jones, Salon, Huff Post to WaPo posted multiple fake stories about Trump and constantly took his comments or things he did decades ago out of context.
If people are turning to alt-media, it is simply because the MSM is repulsively and openly biased. They no longer even try and hide their disdain for Trump, or Christians, for traditional families, morals or the middle class.
Still lost the popular vote though, cause the majority of Americans aren’t aren’t as easily conned as you are Jess.
Bill Clinton lost the 1992 “popular vote” by 14 million votes, and he lost the “popular vote” in 1996 by 1.5 million votes.
Total lie. Clinton won by 44.9million votes to 39.1 million.
It’s not a “total lie”. Bill Clinton had more people voting against him than for him. Out of 104 million ballots cast (give or take) Clinton received almost 45 million.
The “majority of Americans” sure didn’t vote HRC! Add 3rd party votes to DJT’s… So sick of the “popular vote” b.s.- it was a US Presidential election, not a “popularity contest”… Somebody put a dang tiara on her head & let’s move on already!
Good point, I’m libertarian and voted G.Johnson– but if there were only 2 options, I NEVER would have voted Hillary ( nor would any Libertarian).
Hillary is the ultimate, deep-state/establishment candidate with her corporotocracy slant, her Neo-con warhawk attitudes ( we’d probably already have troops in Ukraine ready to start WW3 if Hillary had won), her phony foundation taking billions as political bribes from countries trying to buy her favor ( like the Saudis who donated $20 million-obvious corruption). Hillary is dirty–these are FACTS. Ask any of the tens of thousands of Haitians living in those tent cities still while Hill and Bill gave their donors the relief funds to build resorts on the other side of the island from the earthquake-also FACT.
The biggest fake news was the MSM’s intentional obfuscation about MASSIVE Clinton scandals and corruption while digging through 10 to 20 year old soundbites to find Trump speaking crudely among the guys…I hope Trump lives long enough to clean up or bring to light a lot of the CFR’s and globalists treason against the American people.
It wasn’t a popularity contest! Somebody please throw a dang tiara on her head & let’s get down to working on the country… since HRC’s feelings being hurt after loosing seems strangely a concern instead of moving forward
Meaningless statistic.
Trump won the majority of electoral college votes, which is what they both sought. He won the majority of states, the majority of counties, and the majority of congressional districts. His party won the majority of governorships and state legislatures.
Bill Clinton’s wife did’t even win a majority in the popular vote, she had a plurality. Same as Bill. Twice.
Trump’s guy who ran the campaign (young guy out of Texas), was on the radio. He discussed the plan, it was to win the electoral vote. Remove the illegal and dead people’s vote and Trump would have won the popular vote.
Why do losers have to live onto the dream of the popular vote? You lost! Washington Post has a study that was proven out that 800,000 illegals voted for Hillary. That number is probably low. On top of that, we have the electoral college for a good reason. When you look at the map of the U.S., most of it is red now. Only a handful of coastal states are blue. How many seats have you guys picked up over the last 8 years? Hmmmm…. You have lost over 1000 seats nationwide, most governorships, state bodies, House, Senate, and now the President are a rebuke to your ideologies. So you might want to ask why you guys have lost so much if you are so popular!
Really? The urban concentration of votes in SoCal, DC-Boston corridor and Chicago that gave Hillary the vast majority of her votes are not easily conned? Actually they are much MORE easily conned. And shepherded to the polls by city machines. And fed fear steady diet of fear about loss of rights, funding, Nazis, etc. That was fake news and agit-prop at its best.
Hillary did not come even close to getting a majority of eligible voters. Nearly 100 million voters did not vote…. but she did get 800,000 illegible foreign votes, the cemetery vote, and the repeat voters who voted more than 1 x, or when the machines switched the votes to her favor. That her events were so unattended begs the question… where did all the votes come from?
Facebook will save us from Fake News? Please they are part of the propaganda problem by calling alternative news “Fake News”…
Perfectly stated
Today a former senior adviser to Obama from ’09-’11 proposed
several ways to remove Pres. Trump including a military coup.
This nation has lost 6 presidents murdered to Rothschild Bank
directed and paid assassins. This is historical Fact.
The 1st. amendment permits Free Speech, but not Treasonous
speech suggesting a siting president be removed in a Coup.
I suggest this former ‘presidential adviser’ be arrested…
The reason the left is in such a state of hysteria is that they truly are afraid that President Trump will deliver on all his promises. So far he is. If he is highly successful, we will have him for 8 years. It could be the beginning of the transformation of all future candidates. Trump is going to make the repubs do things that they haven’t been accustomed to doing. He’s going to make them stand up for their principles by forcing their hand. This president will change the way Washington thinks. Watch and see.
Recommending, proposing, or otherwise inciting people to harm the president is a felony. It is not free speech. Don’t do it. Instead, Vote. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/871
Very very well said!!!
When I watched the explosion of liberal outcry on Facebook when the buzzfeed thing was posted, I coined the following thought: Liberal pigs at the MSM trough: lappin’ it up and fartin’ it out.
Anyone who believes that fake news had any outcome on the election would never admit that they themselves had ever fallen for a fake news story. They automatically assume that everyone who is not them are too stupid to decipher the difference. Liberalism is a disease and this is one of it’s many symptoms
Yup. MSM operates on the premise that it’s easier to fool someone than to convince them they have been fooled. The instant a lie is believed, they will defend the lie instead of admitting they were fooled.
Sounds like a fake study to me. Of course it affected the election, just not in the way their preconceived conclusion thought. It was the BACKLASH from the fake news that helped drive people to Trump.
This was fake news. Most or All of today’s University Professors are liberal and publish stuff full of spin.
true American… thank you.
Yes, but besides those click-bait ad-link sites that clearly are joke commerce sites, the so-called respectable mainstream sources were the real fake news in that their intention was purely political and since the election they’ve doubled down with no sense of irony. The collusion (Wikileaks, D.C. Leaks, Project Veritas) of the MSM/Polls with the DNC and Obama administration was the real story which of course the MSM didn’t cover – duh. The reporting which became indistinguishable from editorializing was pure propaganda and what they didn’t report was even more scandalous. Pravda on LSD.
Trumpster loser, psycho.
Get a life. Jeeze.
well put
Perfect.
Ditto!
And, like many, I eagerly await the day that anyone, ANYONE will give just ONE example of what “fake news” was supposedly put out to sway the election. Even the author of this article doesn’t cite any!!!
Need a link to the study. Here is the pdf version of the paper: https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf
Journalists, do your work!
Is this a fake news story
Yes its a fake study conducted by some blind idiots to appease the ignorant. They can not see a tree because of the forest all around them. Fake news was so rampant it pissed off enough people to cause Hillary to lose. Since this does not fit the template of the news media they shopped for a fake study to support their fake ideas.
You hit the nail on the head Gary.
While I agree the study provides no real value in this whole thing, if you think Hillary lost due to “Fake News,” her gender, or a sudden surge in deplorable racist bigots, you have lost perspective on the whole damned affair.
I’m pretty sure Gary was being sarcastic. His point is that all the anti-Trump, pro-Hillary fake news in the Main Stream Media pissed off the average voters enough to get out and vote for Trump.
There is something to that. I don’t buy that blatantly false stories circulating on social media had an impact on the election, but I can certainly buy that the average American living in flyover country was motivated to go vote in part in retaliation for the obvious bias and condescension of the MSM.
Nail meet head. I have refused to watch the alphabet news for over ten years, sick of those a$$ holes looking down their nose at me.
Crawl back into your basement, snowflake. Hillary lost because progressivism is dead. If you want to talk fake news, talk about Hillary’s 92% chance of winning, Islam is peace, no illegals voted, and Russians changing the election outcome. People like you are the reason progressives will never win again. America is sick of your type.
Right, because NYU is a known bastion of conservatism and and thus has a vested interest in placating conservatives. Derp. Try not to hurt yourself stumbling around your shoebox of a studio apartment today cupcake, and don’t forget to breathe! inhale AND exhale!
Are you hungry?
Sorry Gary…not true
You guys have an excuse for everything don’t you?!? LOL If the dem party is so popular and she lost solely because of fake news…. Why have you guys lost SO many seats nationwide over the last 8 years? Please answer that. Most of the country now is red. You guys lost over 200 counties this election alone. Over 8 years, you lost 1000 seats nationwide. Most state legislators are repubs, most governors are repub, the House, Senate, and now the President! You guys are almost non-existent. Why? Fake news? Nope!
Looks like Hartwell promotes fake news. You can tell when he says pro Trump fake news was many that times of Hillary’s.
Looks like the study mostly dealt with positive inaccurate stories rather than the negative. I’m sure the study is a good study but it doesn’t justify the conclusion that fake news did not impact the outcome of the election.
If either candidate had a significantly larger share of negative fake news stories floating about, it was Trump. So…there goes your narrative.
You are right, fake news failed to stop Trump or help hillary as intended.
Actually, the study appears to indicate that “anti-Trump” stories were considered “pro-Clinton”, and “anti-Clinton” stories were counted as “pro-Trump.” Also, most people on social networks primarily have a cohort with basically similar positions – that is most of the pro-Trump fake news was spread in cohorts which were already pro-Trump, and similarly for pro-Clinton fake news. The conclusions are quite reasonable as a result.
If you were to make the claim that fake news did have an effect on the election, then _that_ claim would need to be demonstrated, however. Until then, we assume that the claim is not true. I’ve seen rather a lot of “real” news making what are in effect entirely unsubstantiated claims about fake news.
How did you draw that conclusion? The article mentions nothing about “positive” or “negative” articles.
I think this is a fake comment.
Regardless it still does not sway or influence mebfrom being able to see that HRC was simply a terrible candidate and a serial liar, who, like the whole of the Democrat party is completely out of touch with the working class.
I think one major factor that did affect the election was the WikiLeaks dumps, which were most certainly NOT fake news.
First the DNC dump where the rigging of the nomination and collusion of the press in helping Clinton was exposed. Americans don’t, by and large, suffer cheats well…
The Podesta emails were also important. The irony is that Podesta claims on his resume to be something of a cyber security expert. That he fell for a phishing scam is laughable. His original password was P@ssw0rd…
1200 people is hardly a large enough sample to accurately reflect the national impact.
Most people pay no attention to ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC—the fake news sites—because they know what they’re going to get and not get. The genuine news sites are off the radar and we look at those.
Amen. CNN being the worst…
Is this fake news?
Another “duh” result from a study. I worked in the media business for years, and I will tell you “fake news” is 1% fake and 99% spin. Of course the 1% fake didn’t affect the results. It’s the 99% spin you have to watch out for.
Exactly. And whether the underlying story was true or not, it’s pretty clear that in this election cycle about 99% of the spin was pro-Clinton and anti-Trump.
Democrat lies and whining is more like it.
Democrats & ‘progressives’ simply refuse to accept that they lost. Many are so entrenched in their bubble of hatred for Donald Trump that they believe its worth taking the country and its institutions to the brink of civil war in order to regain power. Something in the liberal mind cannot accept defeat or cannot accept the idea that their philosophy is in terminal decline.
Now this is FAKE news:
“Although fake news stories in Trump’s favor were shared more times (30 million compared to 8 million for Hillary Clinton)”.
Of course it did
Every liberal seems to have been tricked by mountains of fake news
HRC lost because she was fake.
Her numerous campaign reboots and re-introductions were necessary because she is fundamentally dishonest and contrived.
Meanwhile, Trump is either unaware or afraid to reveal what he is thinking 24/7- warts and all.
The nation chose candid imperfection over smooth dishonesty.
Fake news from a fake university …
@youdude60
Well said.
I for one did not pick Trump because of any news story ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, but because at 56 years old I’ve seen enough Dem and Republican iterations to recognize a failed system, and just wanted someone who would truly blow the system up.
So far so good…
So, if ABC / WAPO publish the results of a survey where Democrats were over-represented, is that fake news? I’d say so, but it certainly wasn’t reported that way.
Specifically, I’m referring to their polls a few weeks ago where they reported that the country was upset at the Trump transition. It seems that the respondents were 45% Democrat, 30% independent, and 25% Republican even though the country is split roughly into thirds.
Facebook is still full of people arguing using points from fake news sites. They believe that crap. How can that not have affected the election?
FAKE news….that reallly is true….and entertaining…..
Feb 2nd 2017…Ground Hog day reminds me of the day NYC Mayor Bla killed the ground hog and the weather ….and illegal
corruption has continued for more than six weeks……Hey Bla, get out of the the pubs and do your job…..you skof-law…
The article does not address the morality of fake news, merely was it effective or not. Fake news are 99% attack ads and should not be looked at as pro or con, but merely fake. No one could say anything bad about hillary that was not easily believable due to her transparent fakiness.
Considering that the coined term, “Fake News”, wasn’t even part of our trendy vocabulary until the very end of the 2016 election cycle, could it be that this study, this Charles Hartwell post itself, are…”Fake News”?
I think the study should have been directed at what appears to be a serious mental defect in the sycophants who, when faced with a fact, turn and run, think really hard about how to neutralize the fact threat, and then turn to media and social media in order to fire the shot.
In a world where white is black, and black is white, even a fool always knows where mainstream media stands. In fact, you could write their news stories just out of the ‘comments’ sections of many sources of daily news.
It didn’t really effect the election because the population has come to realize that the MSM are liars and propagandists for the Washington Criminal Mafia and nobody trusts or believes them anymore.
We on the right have our sources we go to for news (not the MSM) and those on the left have their sources as well, neither are going to convince the other.
Not sure why we even call the networks MSM anymore because they are no longer mainstream and no longer trusted.
The first thing you must do when you read an article is think, “Does this sound too good (or bad) to be true?” Then get off your duff and do a little research. If you can’t find a trusted site to back up the story you have been fed, chances are it is a hoax.
But what is a “trusted site”? The mainstream media are in the tank for the Democrat Party and its candidates and officeholders. Everything they put out is spun to make their boys and girls look good, and Republicans look bad. If I read a story from any known mainstream media source, I read it with the thought that it has been written to have left-wing propaganda value.
The fake news was all the push-polling that had the Benghazi Butcher with a 12 point lead right up until election day. The MSM have be the curators of fake news since before Kronkite.