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3 in 4 Facebook 'shares' are by people who haven't read the story, especially extreme stuff or content that confirms pre-existing political stance. Most (76–82%) of unread shared articles are from conservative news sources, with liberals responsible for 14.25% of shared content they hadn't read.
3 in 4 Facebook 'shares' are by people who haven't read the story, especially the extreme stuff A US analysis of over 35 million Facebook posts shared between 2017 and 2020 found that ‘shares without clicks’ - articles shared by people who haven't read the article they're sharing - make up
Most (76–82%) of the unread shared articles they studied originated from conservative news sources, while liberals were responsible for 14.25% of shared content they hadn't read. This suggests news that goes viral on Facebook often does so based on users' superficial interpretation of headlines and short blurbs, rather than the longer content they link to, the experts conclude, which has implications for the design of social media platforms if they wish to promote informed political discourse online. Funder: This research was supported by Social Media and Democracy Research Grants, awarded by the Social Science Research Council, with access to Facebook data via Social Science One (grantees: S.S.S., G.C., J.W.
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