Researchers: Fake News Did Not Alter 2016 Presidential Election Results

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.

Fake news did not affect the presidential election in 2016, researchers say.

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.

Comments

  1. Yes it did
    Every liberal I know was tricked by tons of fake news. They think the Russians hacked the election and Trump is a KKK member

  2. Fake news has been around forever, but it used to be called “propaganda”. Today, it’s just an excuse for angry sore-losers because they can’t accept that they had a bad candidate. Sure, lots of moronic false stories were presented in social media during the election (from both sides), but the only folks who believed the worst of the garbage were also folks who had their minds made up for one candidate or the other. It’s time to get past the election. Stupid, fake-news stories didn’t persuade anyone. It’s delusional to believe otherwise.

  3. Bullshit. 1200 people are supposed to represent the entire population of the United States? I saw the amount of crap people were sharing and believing. What a perfect way for the establishment to cover their tracks of rigging an entire election. The whole system is a sham. No one voted for these cretins, certainly not half the country in either case. By every measure (except the ones in Mainstream Media) Bernie Sanders should have been our new president.

  4. I am insulted as a Trump supporter, watching the politicians sell us out for decades for their own gain…INCLUDING HILLARY AND OBAMA, that the whole cesspool is shocked that TRUMP WON!~ Why so shocked? Out of touch for sure!

    He WON BIG, and WON legitimately, how insulting these morons are to say PUTIN put a gun to our heads to vote for him. The lies the media and the DIMMS are telling to try and de-legitimize this historic win is disgusting!

    Scary so many SNOWFLAKES and crazy middle aged white women see differently, and believe the drivel of their inarticulate and false narrative of Trump, a guy who was in office office less then 24 hrs. Their idiotic march was meant to empower (in their minds)and turned into something embarrassing for generations to come!

    I have watched Hillary for a long, long time! How these people wanting her in office is offensive to me, as a woman, I am sure it was all about her vagina and not her accomplishments. She stuck by her man and ridiculed woman of his sexual assaults, she did it to a young woman who was raped as well. Hillary Clinton is not a champion of anyone or anything..unless it escalates her agenda! The stories are out there. The book are out there, verified and true! Yet the liberal looks at that eye opening wealth of information as it was garlic and a cross! People have spoken, things verified..and the sheep still wanted her! What are her accomplishments? She was in all her official positions…BECAUSE OF BILL..HER HUSBAND! She is who these leftist loons CHAMPION as an “empowered”, did it myself woman?? I knew at all costs given Hillary’s history of deceit and nastiness, and her sellout of America…SHE WOULD NOT BE PRESIDENT! I did not believe the polls for a minute.

    Shame on the Democratic voter, who got screwed by the DNC manipulation and theft to get their weak candidate in the position to run for president! Nobody but Bernie in the Democratic Party? The collusion with the MSM and SUPER DELGATES to get her the nod..when crazy Bernie was kicking her ass! YOU ALL SAID NOTHING!!!!!! AND LET THE DNC GET AWAY WITH THEIR SICK DEFEATING AGENDA! Debbie Wasserman Shultz should be in jail, and she was on TV the other night saying all sorts of bad things about Trump, who has been in office for 13 days!

    THE LIBS ARE NUTS, THE MEDIA IS NUTS, GEORGE SOROS IS A PIG AND THEY MARCH TO HIS BANK ACCOUNT! HE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT AMERICA, PROFIT AND DOOM and anarchy ARE HIS ONLY CONCERN! And DONALD TRUMP IS THE BAD GUY? Americans DID NOT WANT HILLARY, she was rejected AGAIN, with good reason! God Bless Donald Trump. I and others did not need the news of any kind to tell me what I have know for years. The Clinton’s, their “foundations”, their scandals etc. are a cancer on this country! And shame on the immature, inflammatory, treasonous. dangerous actions going on with supported grownups in our government and across the land. YOU LOST! Pray for our PRESIDENT, we sink or rise as a nation together..grow up!

  5. Notice that every hourly newscast from CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, MSNBC, NPR will say something negative about Trump. It was that way since the campaigns began and continues today. This is what makes me despise the media and the Democratic party(probably for life). I used to be a JFK Democrat but I believe that today JFK would be a Republican.

  6. So the results showed that a pro-Trump fake news story was FOUR TIMES as likely to have been seen and remembered as a pro-Clinton fake news story. The study then further concluded (based on the results of a survey question) that such stories did not affect the election results. Drawing such a conclusion from such a question assumes that people make rational, conscious decisions and know exactly why they selected one candidate over another. Such an assumption is completely unwarranted and renders the conclusion drawn invalid.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *