The Spread of Fake News Interferences in The US Presidential Elections

Conducted by Elizabeth Palacios

Abstract:

      In today’s age, almost everyone has some social media outlet they frequently check throughout the day. One benefit of these platforms is users gain easy intel on what is happening around the world. People can spread awareness about any matter, whether it is news in the United States or any other country. However, the downside to being able to have easy access to the spread of information is that people can promote fake content by using multi-collective studies from the 2016 US presidential election. The studies and research would prove that fake news on social media platforms influences voters’ decision to be president. A social experiment would also be conducted, where researchers would ask participants two questions. What do they think of the 2020 presidential election? & Where did they hear the information that they might have mentioned? Due to social distance protocols, many of the surveys would be given through a phone call or text. The purpose of the social experiment is to prove that social media content has a significant influence on votes. 

 Background 

     Researchers investigating if fake news helped Donald Trump beat Hilary Clinton in the 

2016 presidential election. They define fake news as misinformation to confused and second guess the public. Misinformation such as photoshop or edit pictures has been taken out of context, articles that have been manipulated to convince the audiences to believe an event or accusation occur or even memes that exaggerate the media’s message. A social media platform that has been accused of having an influential contribution in the 2016 election is Facebook. The accusation was abundant that it led Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify above a senate committee in 2018 (Lee).

Collective Research Method

    To be able to conclude to the statement that fake news influences the presidential elections. First, we have to know how many American voters were exposed to such content. We have to determine the number of engagements the fake content received—the number of retweets or shares. Next, we would have to distinguish the voter’s original stance before election day. After that, we have to determine how many of the voters recalled and believed the false information. Where then, we can compare if their position changed when it came to vote. How many turned from democrat to republican or vice versa. We would be gathering several studies from different sources to determine our hypothesis that fake news on social media affects the presidential elections’ outcome. 

Social Media Experiment Method

      The purpose of the social media experiment is to conduct a survey of questions and distribute it to several participants to determine if the results support the collective research conclusions. The two main questions that would be asked are what they thought of the 2020 US presidential elections and where they retrieved any of the information that supports their opinions. For social distance purposes, many of the surveys will be conducted through text messages. The researcher would not be allowed to mention what answers they are trying to receive from the surveys. The participants would be of diverse ethnic backgrounds around the ages of 20-23; most actively use social media. 

Results from the Collective Research and Social Experiment

The question is if witnessing these fake news media influences their decision at the presidential election. Approximately 126 million Americans were presented with Russian politically oriented fake news during election dates. Scientists from Ohio State University researched whether people changed their blue to red votes based on fake news. The scientist theorized that voters who voted for Obama in 2012 were likely to vote for Clinton in 2016; unless they had a reason to switch their position. Out of the people who voted for the democratic party in 2016, only 77% remained blue, and 10% changed to the Republican party (Vosoughi). When the scientist asked voters if they believed three major fake news headlines, there was a strong link to the belief that they were true and how people voted. The data shows that fake media got more shares, likes, and comments on Facebook than real news. With a total of 8.7 million engagement compared to the real news of 7.3 engagement (Johnson). Overall it is still challenging to predict if such articles exposure results from swing state changing their position, yet such data supports the hypothetical potential.        

      For the social experiment, I conducted a small survey for three of my friends to answer. Participants #1, a 21-year-old male, responded to the first question on what he thought about the presidential election. He did not vote because he did not like both candidates. He expressed his standpoint that he did not like Biden more than Trump. When asked him where he based his information from? The participant response was, “I do not use Wikipedia or social media because a lot of the information is not true” He said he based his knowledge on the conversations he had with his uncle because of his uncle’s researchers a lot about elections. As for participant #2, she is a 20-year-old female who did not vote for the same reason as participant #1. She does not like either candidate equally; when asked where she got her intel from, she said she researched if the allegation made of both parties were true. However, she did hear the major of the accusations about both candidates from social media. Lastly, participant #3 is a 23-year-old female who did vote for Trump. When I asked her what she thought of the election, she said she preferred Trump because although the media (news and social media) portrays him as evil, she researched what Trump did over four years. She said it was more than Biden did in 47 years. She said she could recognize the bias in social media based on the algorithm found in the state you live in. 

Discussion

      The research that I conducted from different studies indicates a strong indication that the spread of fake news on social media influences people’s decisions in the polls. Although there is a strong correlation, there is still an unsure certainty that this could be a direct result of the change in voters who were predicted to vote for a particular party. A lot of factors should also be considered, as did voters research credible sources after seeing fake content on social media. How often are these individuals on social media sites? Can the algorithm be biased by providing you certain content based on your location? Many of these questions came up as I was conducting a small social experiment. Participate #1 does not research the accusation; however, he is still self-aware that believing anything online is shady. Participate #2 and #3 are knowledgeable enough to investigate on their own time on the allegations they have witnessed on social media. However, Participant #3 questioned whether the algorithm could be biased because of specific places such as New York City. A user can expect to see more fake republican content in New York City than in Long Island. The experiment’s overall result is that people certainly receive their news from social media; however, whether they believe the fake content depends if the person decides to research after hearing about any accusations. If the experiment was to be performed again, it should have more participants, about 10,000, to make the experiment result more accurate. The participant should also be from different states across the country and other ethnicities, gender, and ages.

Also, all participants should be registered to vote and plan to vote. Due to the lack of contributors, two of my participants did not vote, invaliding themselves because no conclusion was able to be concluded if their decision changed when it came to vote. 

Conclusion

      We all have easy access to what is going on around us through popular social media apps. The majority of what is presented is fake information; it is spreading rapidly and massively through biased users. It is said that fake news spread quicker than authentic news. Through research based on the 2016 presidential election, intel was gathered on how Facebook played an influential part in the polls. As well as the social experiment was done on the 2020 US presidential elections demonstrated that social media play a part in how a person receives their news.

 

Sources

Johnson, Thomas J., et al. “Think the Vote: Information Processing, Selective Exposure to Social Media, and Support for Trump and Clinton.” International journal of communication [Online], 2020, p. 4621+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A635453984/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=f53a812a. Accessed 7 Nov. 2020.

Vosoughi, Soroush, et al. “The Spread of True and False News Online.” Science, vol. 359, no. 6380, Mar. 2018, pp. 1146–1151. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1126/science.aap9559.

Lee, Sangwon, and Michael Xenos. “Social Distraction? Social Media Use and Political Knowledge in Two U.S. Presidential Elections.” Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 90, Jan. 2019, pp. 18–25. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.chb.2018.08.006.