Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election
Hunt Allcott, New York University and NBER ∗
Matthew Gentzkow, Stanford University and NBER
January 2017
Abstract
We present new evidence on the role of false stories circulated on social media prior to the
2016 US presidential election. Drawing on audience data, archives of fact-checking websites,
and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not
dominant source of news in the run-up to the election, with 14 percent of Americans calling
social media their “most important” source of election news; (ii) of the known false news
stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared
a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared eight million
times; (iii) 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; (iv) 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.
Hunt Allcott, New York University and NBER ∗
Matthew Gentzkow, Stanford University and NBER
January 2017
Abstract
We present new evidence on the role of false stories circulated on social media prior to the
2016 US presidential election. Drawing on audience data, archives of fact-checking websites,
and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not
dominant source of news in the run-up to the election, with 14 percent of Americans calling
social media their “most important” source of election news; (ii) of the known false news
stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared
a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared eight million
times; (iii) 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; (iv) 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.