accounts has come under scrutiny in recent years. In 2016, two votes
shook the Western world: in June, Britain voted to leave the ; in
November, Donald Trump won the US presidency. What had caused
these events? In the aftermath, speculation grew that false
information – much of it created by Russia and far-right groups – had
been spread widely during these elections. Vast numbers of people in
the UK, and then vast numbers in the US, had been duped by fake
stories posted by bots and other questionable accounts.
At first glance, the data seem to support this story. There’s
evidence that over 100 million Americans may have seen Facebook
posts backed by Russia during the 2016 election. And on Twitter,
almost 700,000 people in the US were exposed to Russian-linked
propaganda, spread by 50,000 bot accounts.[98] The idea that many
voters fell for propaganda posted by fake websites and foreign spies
is an appealing narrative, especially for those of us who were
politically opposed to Brexit and Trump. But if we look more closely at
the evidence, this simple story starts to fall apart.
Despite Russia-linked propaganda circulating during the 2016 US
election, Duncan Watts and David Rothschild have pointed out that a
lot of other content was as well. Facebook users may have been
exposed to Russian content, but during that period American users
saw over 11 trillion posts on the platform. For every Russian post
people were exposed to, on average there were almost 90,000 other
pieces of content. Meanwhile on Twitter, less than 0.75 per cent of
election-related tweets came from accounts linked with Russia. ‘In
sheer numerical terms, the information to which voters were exposed
during the election campaign was overwhelmingly produced not by
fake news sites or even by alt-right media sources, but by household
names,’ noted Watts and Rothschild.[99] Indeed, it’s been estimated
that in the first year of his campaign, Trump gained almost $2bn
worth of free mainstream media coverage.[100] The pair highlighted
the media focus on the Hillary Clinton email controversy as one
example of what outlets chose to inform their readers about. ‘In just
six days, the New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary
Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69
days leading up to the election.’