Where did you hear that?!? It was a common response in the 2020 election season amid an age of “fake news,” people’s trust in traditional media in decline, and social media virality. New research from Northeastern University offers some answers — finding misinformation spread very differently than most content on Facebook during the 2020 election season, relying on gradual, peer-to-peer sharing from a smaller number of users in the wake of crackdowns on misinformation from Pages and Groups on the social media platform.
“We found that most content is spread via a big sharing event, it’s not like it trickles out,” David Lazer, university distinguished professor of political science and computer sciences, says. “For misinformation, it’s different. Misinformation — at least in 2020 — spread virally.” “Our inference is that this is likely because the content moderation policy by Facebook focused in 2020 on pages and groups,” Lazer continues.
