Reshares on social media amplify political news but do not detectably affect beliefs or opinions
We studied the effects of exposure to reshared content on Facebook during the 2020 US election by assigning a random set of consenting, US-based users to feeds that did not contain any reshares over a 3-month period. We find that removing reshared content substantially decreases the amount of political news, including content from untrustworthy sources, to which users are exposed; decreases overall clicks and reactions; and reduces partisan news clicks. Further, we observe that removing reshared content produces clear decreases in news knowledge within the sample, although there is some uncertainty about how this would generalize to all users. Contrary to expectations, the treatment does not significantly affect political polarization or any measure of individual-level political attitudes.
Authors
- Rebekah Tromble (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3875-2729)
- Matthew Gentzkow (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7758-8656)
- Annie Franco
- Pablo Barberá (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9063-4829)
- Brendan Nyhan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7497-1799)
- David Lazer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7991-9110)
- Taylor Brown (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5284-338X)
- Devra Moehler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3631-8630)
- Emily Thorson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6514-801X)
- Adriana Crespo-Tenorio
- Jaime E. Settle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2190-9291)
- Neil Malhotra (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4477-6049)
- Daniel Robert Thomas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6284-4768)
- Arjun Wilkins (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5315-356X)
- Chad Kiewiet de Jonge
- Young Mie Kim (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6068-9274)
- Magdalena Wojcieszak (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5456-4483)
- Andrew M. Guess (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2974-7848)
- Edward H. Kennedy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0227-158X)
- Drew Dimmery (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9602-6325)
- Sandra González‐Bailón (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8372-798X)
- Natalie Jomini Stroud (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3528-9986)
- Hunt Allcott
- Joshua A. Tucker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1321-8650)
- Carlos Velasco Rivera
- Deen Freelon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5055-0316)
- Jennifer Pan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4818-0122)
- Winter Mason (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1269-8947)
- B.S. Xiong
Institutions
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- UNC Libraries
- Published
- 2025-03-19
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.17615/e1dj-y987
- Primary Topic
- Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of North Carolina