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by Thomas E. Patterson, The Journalist s Resource
October 27, 2020 h1 Election Beat 2020: How news outlets become misinformation superspreaders /h1 p class byline by Thomas E. Patterson, The Journalist s Resource br October 27, 2020 /p p Russia is again peddling misinformation in an attempt to upend our election. It’s an important news story, but there’s a larger threat that’s getting less coverage. In a New York University Stern School a href https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/april/tackling-domestic-disinformation what-the-social-media-companie.html study /a , Paul Barrett shows that Russia’s contribution to our misinformation problem is nearly a distraction compared with what Americans themselves are providing. An a href https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/2018/11/marchal et al.pdf Oxford University study of Facebook and Twitter shares during the 2018 midterm election /a reached the same conclusion, finding that
Despite growing evidence that exposure to and engagement with disinformation narrowly defined on the basis of identified problematic domains is a very small part of most people’s media use, concentrated among partisans actively seeking it out, and often primarily consumed by people who consume far more news from established outlets, survey research suggests very widespread concern over disinformation, especially online.
One survey conducted in 2020 asked respondents across 40 media markets whether, thinking about online news, they were concerned about what is real and what is fake on the internet. 56% of respondents across these markets were ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ concerned about this, ranging from a low 32% in the Netherlands to a high 84% in Brazil.