A new study suggests that what we think we know about fake news may be all wrong.
A team, of researchers from three distinguished universities surveyed 2-thousand-525 Americans as well as internet traffic data in the early fall of 2016, over several weeks leading up to the presidential election four years ago and in the days just following Donald Trump’s win over Hillary Clinton.
They found that less than half of all Americans visited any of these websites during that time period. And that only 6% of Americans are estimated to have been regularly visiting such sources in 2016.
The researchers say those in the survey who said they were Trump supporters were much more likely, by about 20-percent, to visit a questionable news or fake news website than those who said they were Clinton supporters.
But the study also concluded that fact-checking websites don’t seem to be as effective as you might have thought at changing opinions of most people of either party who go to these questionable news sites.
The study found that less than half of the people who had visited a fake news source went to fact-checking sites. And virtually none of them had checked out a specific fact-checking article regarding a subject they had read about on a questionable news website.
While some may think this new study about fake news is fake news, but then maybe it’s just that fake news and real news has become so blurred, it’s hard to tell.
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