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.
There is fake news. then there is unreported or under-reported news. Such as Bengazi, exposed e-mails, Clinton Foundation.etc., etc. etc.
Watch out the Snowflakes will huff and puff and burn your house down.
Fact checking? From who….CNN?
The silent masses spoke loudly this election.
If the fake news wasn’t swaying the elections then they only logical reason they are so worked up about it is that it actually is NOT fake news.
Such a Red Herring! No one claimed Fake News had anything to do with the election outcome. This will no doubt come as a surprise to you because of your preconception that there must have been an outside force that contributed to the defeat of your invincible candidate, so you naturally completely missed the reason she was defeated: She was defeated because she failed to gain the support of the electorate that judged her opponent was a better candidate by comparison of the candidates’ positions on the specific issues of immigration, national security, economic policy, foreign policy, health care, environment and education. Bonus: There is no need for a study to prove it; the election was the study.
Of course fake news affected the election. Fake news affects our lives every day since I can remember (back to 1975 anyway). Dan Rather was one of the PIONEERS of fake news, but the roster of its forked-tongued purveyors is long, long, long.
“NYU economics professor Hunt Allcott and Stanford economics professor Matthew Gentzkow led the research.”
AKA Fake News
Hey Professors, no one believes the lies you publish with your jerry-rigged “studies” any more.
Can we start calling Fake News what it really is – Democratic Propaganda.
How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru
John McMillan, Pablo Zoido
Journal of Economic Perspectives Fall, 2004
Which of the democratic checks and balances – opposition parties, the judiciary, a free press – is the most forceful? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Montesinos systematically undermined them all with bribes. We quantify the checks using the bribe prices. Montesinos paid television-channel owners about 100 times what he paid judges and politicians. One single television channel’s bribe was five times larger than the total of the opposition politicians’ bribes. By revealed preference, the strongest check on the government’s power was the news media.
I am sure that the fake news did not change any intelligent persons mind. There was enough real news about hilliary and friend’s email, that has never been denied, to let everyone know that keeping these same group in power would be a mistake.
HillBillary was a fake candidate…
http://napoleonlive.info/politics/video-trump-can-not-win/
We endured fake news for 8 years, mostly from the lying Obama. He had frequent off the record meetings with the networks and newspapers. The AP always cooked the unemployment numbers, And our economy as constantly in a Recovery. All the state run media gladly told the lies and fake news for their Kardashian, messiah president. The problem was, the jig was up : his lies caught up with him.
Drain the swamp lol! More like dig it deeper to make more room . Jobs ? Like the ones in Atlantic City and elsewhere , where the working man gets scewed again by Hoover and his kind of “smart. business man” Let’s just do away with the whole EPA. And while we’re. at it the bunch at foggy bottom , the UN etc .Ironically the folks who can’t stop telling you who won are the same ones whose jobs are never coming back . The Circus isn’t folding , just moving ! Feel bad for my grandkids and their kids ! What will they be left with , a polluted planet or a nuked one but hey billionaires need more billions right ! Don’t forget to keep drinking the kool-aid !
Poor Hilary. What is she going to do with her bad self now? Start a fake news website?
Hopefully Hilary will keep drinking the ” fake news ” cool aid. The progressive partisans keep believing and trusting the ” fake ” news. Good day and good night.
Oh, did you mean all the news on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and even National Review and Fox? Is that’s the fake news you’re referring too? I didn’t think so.
“Researchers: Fake News Did Not Alter Election Results”
Oh, and by the way, this is a “Fake News” story.
Fake news didn’t have any effect on me, but I can’t say the same for the kids burning college campuses to keep opposing views from being heard.
I think without fake news and media bias Hillary not only would not have won a 1/2 dozen states. In fact, she wouldn’t have even gotten the nomination. She wouldn’t have been Secretary of State or a US Senator because Bill would not have survived impeachment for all the things he did.
It’s good to know what you believe and to in turn act on your values. Fake new didn’t influence me, but be careful! Saying it had no effect is to dismiss the evil that permeates that industry as irrelevant or inconsequential. The outrage over Russias alleged interfence in our election by outing the truth about Hillary and the DNC is nothing to the full knowledge that our press corps seeks to dupe voters into their pet candidates every time we go to the polls.
“Social media”?
WHAT ABOUT THE LIBERAL “MAINSTREAM” MEDIA?!?!?
ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, LA Times, etc., etc., etc…
Hillary spent 1.2 Billion dollars on her campaign. (Several times what Trump spent) and that put what, 50 thirty second ads in the average American home? The liberal media blasted hours of anti Trump pro Hillary hate propaganda into every American home every day for most of a year.
“Fake news” gave Hillary a half dozen points in the polls and several states.
Emoji faces & comments don’t count?… shared & viewed very different things