Introduction During the 2016 election, Pope Francis endorsed GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump—at least, according to WTOE 5, a fake news Facebook page that has since been deleted. This is just one of the many examples of fake news stories that was shared across social media during the 2016 election. In this case, the story had over one million shares with some people genuinely believing it from the headline alone! While seemingly benign, fake news is indicative of a much larger problem: a democracy with votes based on false information. Fake media is not a new occurrence. After all, Thomas Jefferson once slurred against his running mate John Adams, proclaiming him to be a hermaphrodite in a widely circulating newspaper. However, the innovations created through social media has allowed its reach to be far greater than in previous election years. A single post can be …show more content…
In particular, it shows that a majority of fake news was partisan to Trump, and over half of those exposed to such fake news believed it to be true. However, in order to control for the forgetfulness, the two conducted prior tests to determine how much fake news an individual social media user encountered and could accurately recall. The overall number amounted to 1.14 stories per month during the months leading up to the election. Hunt and Gentzkow further theorized that due to Republicans’ increasing mistrust in the mainstream media, either fake news sources cater to them in order to offer an alternative that is more likely to gain views or Republicans are more likely to believe such fake news, though there has been push-back on the latter