The Advantage of the Right in Social Media News Sharing

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Annenberg School for Communication::Departmental Papers (ASC)
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Communication
Subject
news sharing, misinformation, online networks, political mobilization, computational social science
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2023
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d'Andrea, Valeria
Deen, Freelon
Domenico, Manlio De
Abstract

We analyze social media activity during one of the largest protest mobilizations in US history to examine ideological asymmetries in the posting of news content. Using an unprecedented combination of four datasets (tracking offline protests, social media activity, web browsing, and the reliability of news sources), we show that there is no evidence of unreliable sources having any prominent visibility during the protest period, but we do identify asymmetries in the ideological slant of the sources shared on social media, with a clear bias towards right-leaning domains. These results support the “amplification of the right” thesis, which points to the structural conditions (social and technological) that lead to higher visibility of content with a partisan bent towards the right. Our findings provide evidence that right-leaning sources gain more visibility on social media and reveal that ideological asymmetries manifest themselves even in the context of movements with progressive goals.

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2022
Journal title
PNAS Nexus
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Oxford University Press
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