From Maximizing to Minimizing Responsibility: A Comparative Analysis of Facebook’s Election Integrity Framing in News Media and the Meta Newsroom

Over the past decade, Facebook has become known for its dangerously flawed approach to election integrity issues. Yet few studies have examined how Meta frames Facebook’s role in election integrity and how these frames are taken up in public discourse. We use qualitative textual analysis to compare framings of Facebook’s political influence between Meta’s Newsroom blog and major American newspapers during the 2020 and 2024 U.S. presidential elections. Findings suggest that the Newsroom blog and newspapers adopted a techno-solutionist imaginary that positions Facebook as the most potent solution for digital threats to democracy. Over time, the framing mechanisms supporting this imaginary shifted from maximizing Meta’s responsibility for election integrity issues to minimizing it. We consider how these frames support the company’s efforts to avoid government regulation and contextualize Meta’s drastic content moderation changes in early 2025.