Truth decayWhy junk news spreads so quickly across social media

By Samantha Bradshaw and Phillip N. Howard

Published 26 March 2018

Why and how has the rise of social media contributed to the spread of what we at the Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project call “junk news” — the tabloidization, false content, conspiracy theories, political propaganda we have become all too familiar with? Three reasons: Algorithms, advertising. and exposure in public life.

Why and how has the rise of social media contributed to the spread of what we at the Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project call “junk news” — the tabloidization, false content, conspiracy theories, political propaganda we have become all too familiar with?

Reason #1: Algorithms
Search algorithms are foundational to our experience of the Internet today. Without them, we would have to sort through massive amounts of information. The fact that algorithms prioritize certain content is not a revelation. For quite some time individuals and businesses have tried to “game” these systems for marketing purposes. What is new is that these business and marketing techniques are now being applied to politics.

Social media platforms rely on algorithms to determine how news and content are disseminated and consumed. The information that is delivered through Facebook’s Newsfeed, Google’s search, and Twitter’s trending topics, is selected and prioritized by complex algorithms that have been coded to sort, filter, and deliver content in a manner that is designed to maximize users’ engagement with the content and time spent on the platform.

However, the ways in which algorithms select and prioritize information have been heavily criticized: instead of promoting the free flow and transparent exchange of ideas that is necessary for a healthy democracy, the personalization of content has created filter bubbles that limit information flows and perpetuate bias.

What’s more, most of the filtering of information that takes place on social media is not the product of the conscious choices of human users. Rather, what we see on our social media feeds and in our Google search results is the product of calculations made by powerful algorithms and machine learning models. These bits of code make decisions for us and about us by personalizing content and tailoring search results to reflect our individual interests, past behaviors, and even geographic location.