GNED-135 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Politifact.Com, Snopes.Com, Buzzfeed
Document Summary
The article social media and fake news in the 2016 election by hunt and alcott and matthew. Gentzkow raised a conclusion that fake news played a major role in the election therefore tipping the scales in favor of the current president trump. According to the article, social media was the main culprit of starting and spreading fake news. In their study, the authors of this particular article looked into three sets of data. First, they started by tracking news traffic on many websites that were associated by social media platforms. Secondly, the analyzed some of the fake news that were topping these platforms. These stories were identified through buzzfeed and two other sites used for fact-checking on these news that are uploaded on these sites. Thirdly, they conducted their own post-election online survey among 1200 voters. However, this changed three months later towards the election when news were fabricated by pro-trump individuals.