Fake news on Twitter most likely to be shared by conservatives, study finds

The research follows a similar study on the spread of misinformation on Facebook during the 2016 US elections

A new study reveals engagement with fake news during the US 2016 elections was concentrated among users who were older, conservative and politically engaged (AFP/Getty Images)

The majority of people engaging with misinformation on Twitter in the build up to the 2016 US presidential elections were older, conservative users, a new study suggests.

A study of more than 16,000 American registered voters who shared so-called fake news on the social media platform found that engagement was concentrated toward this demographic.

Donald Trump has used the term “fake news” to discredit legitimate journalism from well-established news outlets.

For the purpose of the study, published in the journal Science, researchers Northeastern University and Harvard University defined fake news as misinformation designed to mimic traditional news media in its online appearance but that lacked “the news media’s editorial norms”.

By analysing 16,442 Twitter accounts linked to public voter registration records, the researchers found that just 0.1 per cent were responsible for 81 per cent of the fake news shared, most of whom were “older, conservative and politically engaged”.

The publication of the studies in the journal Science come less than a month after researchers from New York University and Princeton University published their own study relating to how misinformation spread on Facebook.

Their results revealed that self-identified conservatives over the age of 65 were seven times more likely to share fake content than people aged 18 to 29.

Despite the similar findings, the studies do not explain why conservatives are so much more inclined to spread misinformation online than liberals.

Future research into the way rumours spread could be one way of better understanding this phenomenon, according to Derek Ruths, an associate professor of Computer Science at McGill University in Montreal, who wasn’t involved in the studies.

Commenting on the findings in Science, Dr Ruths said: “There is a key blind spot in the current research: rumours. Although there has been work on the broad phenomenon of rumouring online and its connection to misinformation, there is a serious need for a better understanding of how fake-news stories transform into rumours and to what extent these rumours can amplify beliefs and infiltrate communities.

“Progress here might help explain one of the most curious and unexplained findings of the paper: that conservatives are significantly more inclined to share and see fake news than liberals.”

One explanation of this, Dr Ruths suggested, would be that liberals embed misinformation in different ways and spread it through ways that can’t be reliably measured.

A spokesperson for Twitter was not immediately available for comment.