Republicans are flagged more often than Democrats for sharing misinformation on X’s Community Notes

We use crowd-sourced assessments from X's Community Notes program to examine whether there are partisan differences in the sharing of misleading information. Unlike previous studies, misleadingness here is determined by agreement across a diverse community of platform users, rather than by fact-checkers. We find that 2.3 times more posts by Republicans are flagged as misleading compared to posts by Democrats. These results are not base rate artifacts, as we find no meaningful overrepresentation of Republicans among X users. Our findings provide strong evidence of a partisan asymmetry in misinformation sharing which cannot be attributed to political bias on the part of raters, and indicate that Republicans will be sanctioned more than Democrats even if platforms transition from professional fact-checking to Community Notes.

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Publication Details

Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Published
2025-06-16
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2502053122
Citations
3
Primary Topic
Misinformation and Its Impacts
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
12.60

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article

Republicans are flagged more often than Democrats for sharing misinformation on X’s Community Notes

Mohsen Mosleh, David G. Rand, Thomas Renault
3 citations
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Misinformation and Its Impacts
12.60
article

Republicans are flagged more often than Democrats for sharing misinformation on X’s Community Notes

Mohsen Mosleh, David G. Rand, Thomas Renault
article en
3 citations

Abstract

We use crowd-sourced assessments from X's Community Notes program to examine whether there are partisan differences in the sharing of misleading information. Unlike previous studies, misleadingness here is determined by agreement across a diverse community of platform users, rather than by fact-checkers. We find that 2.3 times more posts by Republicans are flagged as misleading compared to posts by Democrats. These results are not base rate artifacts, as we find no meaningful overrepresentation of Republicans among X users. Our findings provide strong evidence of a partisan asymmetry in misinformation sharing which cannot be attributed to political bias on the part of raters, and indicate that Republicans will be sanctioned more than Democrats even if platforms transition from professional fact-checking to Community Notes.

Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesVol. 122(25)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), Internet Society (US), University of Oxford (GB), Centre d'Économie de la Sorbonne (FR), Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences (US), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (FR), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
Fondation HEC
Peace, Justice and strong institutions
Openalex Percentile: Top 2%
Misinformation and Its Impacts
12.60
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Republicans are flagged more often than Democrats for sharing misinformation on X’s Community Notes — Mohsen Mosleh, David G. Rand, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS